Jino Park
parkjino@gmail.com
www.parkjino.com

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Each day we fall asleep and die, each day we wake up and revive. A dream is a mini-life within the mini-death in sleep we experience daily. To dream is to attempt to live; We are often startled by a dream and awake. We thus revive. And we are amazed by the vividness of dreams. Bad dreams and nightmares carry such vividness. I've endeavored to depict the vividness of the moment when familiar things appear unfamiliar. I describe this flow of memory with drawing, video and other plastic medias.

One day, I saw through the car window, a tree by the road. It tried to tell me something by raising and waving its branches. The tree was somehow very significant. I should've stop the car to ask it why, but I couldn't. Since then, I have remembered that tree in my dreams and in times of wakefulness. This tree's chronicle appeared in front of me just like a movie. Most poignant of all, I had finally understood what the tree had been trying say to me by waving her branches. To show you, I have to draw the tree.

Memory, the material for my artwork, can be an instant memory for example; and also can also be a long and lazy memory of childhood. It can be a memory of long-ago, like a myth; and it can be a close memory, like yesterday's dream. Like selecting a pot for the planting of a seed, I choose a frame for the planting of a memory. If the work is about a space, I use video, photography or installation. If a work is about an object, I use drawing, painting or sculpture. For the roadside tree, I selected drawing as a frame.

What I want to draw is the flow of memory. It is not the figure of a tree but the story of a tree. I imagine and describe past trees using the present tree as a model. I chase the image of the tree in my head. My method of drawing is as follows: 1. without sketches or a guide; 2. directly on a paper with ink; 3. from one detail to another; 4. by focusing on the continuity of the narrative image and 5 slowly but lay siege to chase.

My work is a narrative of meditative performance. Haruki Murakami once said that "The story is a deep and large device that function transcends the generation and the language, and I would like to believe that power." Myself included, I believe in the power of storytelling. Narrative is a perfect form in which to imbue the 'flow of memory,' and it is the material I use to make art. However, I construct narratives with images not with letters. Like a growing tree, a narrative sprouts new branches which grow in all directions. My work is an experimentation in making a multi-layered narrative structure. The multi-layered narrative structure organically combines patterned modular stories. And those stories are about things that grow, live, die and disappear. In short, I try to tell a story about the vitality and humility of life through my work.

Now, I hang my drawings on the wall, sit down in a chair and gaze at the drawing. I imagine that roadside tree causing someone to stop by waving her branches.

Solo Exhibitions

2010. 3.3 - 3.17
'Dharma Tree' at Gallery PIG Seoul Korea

2009. 4.6 - 4.20
'The Labyrinth' - 'The picks of the year' award of solo exhibition at Munhwailbo Gallery Seoul Korea

2008. 6.6 - 6.19
' Icarus under the moon' at Art space HUT Seoul Korea

2007. 4
'Avignon - Le structure du temps' at Geonhi Gallery Seoul Korea