PARK SEUNGYEA KOREA

I Speak of Anxiety. It is not merely an emotion but a fundamental force that permeates our existence. Through anxiety, we act, make choices, and at times, attack others or even destroy ourselves. My work is a process of examining the contradictory relationships that anxiety creates.

 

Inside and outside of me, there are two monsters that reflect each other. I depict the moment when they recoil in horror as they face one another—the moment when one realizes their resemblance to the very thing they despise, the moment when self-defense turns into violence, the moment when understanding is attempted but the unbridgeable distance remains. All these clashes and tremors take shape on my canvas.

 

I once explored the unconscious through abstraction. But now, I have returned to figuration, passing through surrealism. If abstraction follows an intuitive flow, figuration is a more explicit language. Yet, even that language is incomplete. I paint in a way that exposes the unstable boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious, figuration and abstraction, the individual and society. The figures on my canvas are both myself and others, both real and unreal. They distort and waver on the thin line between self-loathing and self-love that exists within us all.

 

I love humanity, yet I cannot fully trust it. And still, I hold onto an inescapable sense of compassion. Caught in this ambivalence, I continue to paint the battlefield where the monster within me and the monster outside of me confront each other. I do not know what more I will discover, nor do I set any predetermined conclusions. I simply lay bare what I see and feel in the present. I paint anxiety. But to keep it from consuming me, I strive to remain awake until the end.