WONMIN PARK UNDING: RESTORATION OF EXISTENCE
9 MAY – 27 JULY
693 5TH AVENUE
NEW YORK
NY 10022
Showing for the first time in the United States and marking a new ma-trity growth in the practice work of Wonmin Park. Unding invites audi-ences to experience how the work on show Wonmin’s artworks both exemplify and respond to Han’s theories of through material negatives and opposites, displayed through the artist’s his twin series Plain Cuts Stone & Steel and Plain Cuts Remediated. Wonmin’s Park’s Stone & Steel pieces, composed of volcanic rock and industrial steel, are po-sitioned as ‘objects’, balanced against the colored resin and glass ‘non-objects’ of his Remediated artworks. A total of 11 pieces will be on display, including a series of tables, chairs, benches, and a new floor light.
The title of the exhibition is taken from the concept of Unding, meaning ‘unthing’ or ‘non-object’, coined by German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han defines Undinge as objective absences, insubstantial objective absences, insubstantial non-objects that are displacing re-al-world objects through the increasing ubiquity of digital reality. Park’s iconic collections combine opposites that mutually define the other, seen in the juxtaposition of Stone & Steel, using one material to outline and emphasize the qualities of the other.
He develops this concept in this exhibition, pitting object against non-object, only to be able to explore their distinct natures when one is contextualized against the other. Across the two collections, the absence and presence of certain material qualities and conceptual characteristics are compared throughout. A total of 11 pieces will be on display, including a series of tables, chairs, benches, and a new floor light.
In Park’s Restoration of Existence, he grounds his artworks in the real-ity of nature. Stone, steel, glass and resin represent the four elements via a form of synecdoche; each volcanic rock is taken as the core of the Earth itself; each aperture of colored resin represents an inland sea. The viewer will be able to immersive themselves in the poetic charac-teristics of each artwork, such as the incomprehensible age of each stone, or the unique interplay of color and light deep within each resin block are shown as immutable, unable to be converted into the infor-mation-based reality of Byung-Chul Han’s Undinge.
©2023 WONMIN PARKUNDING
Art Plugged is a contemporary platform inspired by a relationship with the broader arts communities. We provide our audience with curated insight into the world of art, from exhibitions to artist interviews and more.
