The forthcoming exhibition “Light, Darkness and the Tree” showcases a series of sculptures communicating the vagaries of being and the eternity of time. Se Yoon Park breathes life into static bodies through the interplay of light and shadow on its very surface, inviting the viewer to question the plasticity of the object and its image.
New York, NY, September 26, 2016 (Newswire.com) – 
was born in Gumi, a small town in South Korea, in 1979. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Changwon City, where rapid industrialization took place in the 1980s and 90s. The stark contrast between his life in the countryside and the industrialist city form the root of his contemplations on light, darkness, time, and life. He is trained as an architect with a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York, and a bachelor’s degree from Yonsei University in Seoul. In his career as an architect, Se Yoon Park has worked for Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Fernando Romero Enterprise (FR-EE), and REX.
“When I began my own practice as an architect, I could not find my own voice as an individual. I had trouble identifying with the projects I worked on. I wanted to give meaning to my work, create meaningful work that every person could understand. As a sculptor, I have learnt to express myself in the language of light and darkness.” – Se Yoon Park
The elementary unit of Park’s work is the complex geometrical shape entitled ‘Light and Darkness’. ‘Light and Darkness’ captures movement within stillness – the surface contorts, splits, disappears into edges, every view differing ever so slightly from the one before. On this very surface lies the weight of the artist’s history, a continuous cycle plunging into darkness and emerging into light. It is the shadow of a skyscraper stretching out upon the rolling green, the clearing cloud of breath on a cold window.
In And Tree of Life, Park aggregates multiple units of Light and Darkness in a bond-free cantilevered system, creating an assembly of parts in delicate equilibrium. Each unit interacts with its surroundings on its own terms, presenting the viewer with its many changing faces at one glance. Every piece a different moment, every tree a different story.
To manifest the language of light and darkness, the work is realized in a variety of materials, each exploited for their inherent materiality. Polyurethane Resin, Ceramic, Wood and 3D printed Polyamide were chosen for their particular textures to capture and diffuse the light. These surfaces also provided an array of canvasses for Park to experiment on as he introduced color into his vocabulary with medium specific surface treatments.
Applying the mind of the architect to the practice of sculpture presented Park with a fecund ground for experimentation and innovation. His creations combine the precision of computer aided design and fabrication technologies with the indisputable presence of the hand in traditional molding and casting methods. A labor of love and self-expression, Light, Darkness, and the Tree is a perpetual work in progress, a work of ever increasing complexity and refinement.
Light, Darkness and the Tree is on show until November 21 at 481 Van Brunt Street #9D, Brooklyn, NY 11231. The gallery is open Mon-Fri from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM. [email protected]. A special exhibition has also been organized as a part of Bushwick Open Studios from October 1-2 at 2 Bushwick Place, Brooklyn, NY 11206 (Corner of Meserole Street and Bushwick Place). For more information about the work, please visit www.seyoonpark.com
All photographs Copyright © 2016 Se Yoon Park