Basel | ArtRegion: Basel - Oberrhein

JanKossen Contemporary

Park Byung-Hoon: Fenêtres de Dieu

11. Mai – 1. Juli 2017

Park Byung-Hoon’s paintings are manifestations of the marriage between bold gestural abstraction and delicate transparency.
While at first glance, the works are reminiscent of an ethereal Mark Rothko, or a vibrant Clyfford Still, Byung-Hoon is more than a master of contemporary abstract expressionism. He is equally aligned with performance art, his work, acting like a relic of a performative action painting caught mid-stroke. Byung-Hoon takes advantage of the translucence of glass to create a narrative; each layer of acrylic plexiglas revealing a different chapter to his process. Existing simultaneously as paintings and sculptures, Byung-Hoon never attempts to control his paint. Instead he allows it to drip and flow before capturing it mid-motion between layers of acrylic. The beauty of each layer fully realized. What is left is a dimensional and storied composition that melds sculpture and painting and allows the viewer to see the inside of a painting. The contrast between his seductive and dynamic layers of vibrant color and his hard-edged and minimalistic layers of Plexiglas are inherently provocative and demanding.

The viewer is confronted with this divergence before sinking slowly into the layers of Byung-Hoon’s chronicle. Byung-Hoon, coming from three generations of Pastor families, and his works, loosely inspired by stained glass windows, are sometimes viewed as windows to the soul.

Park Byung-Hoon was born in 1967. He graduated from Inchon City University, Korea. His work has been exhibited internationally. Park currently lives and works in Paris, France.