Se Yoon Park: Roots and Wings

As he grew up in Gumi, South Korea, the forest near Se Yoon Park’s home was cleared for a factory to be built, all seemingly overnight. Born in 1979, Park is of the generation of South Koreans who came of age amidst the country’s metamorphosis from an insular, agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse. Korean artists from this generation increasingly star in the global art world as international audiences seek to understand the past, present, and future of the divided peninsula. There are references to Korean culture in Park’s Roots and Wings, now on view at Carvalho Park, but more than a homogenization, it mediates heritage through a self-portrait drawn through aspirational dreams and the devotion of parents. 

With the six discrete, but entangled, sculptures that comprise the exhibition, Park explores Goethe’s supposition that children should inherit from their parents “roots and wings.” Park typically uses repeated small, tree-inspired geometric shapes in his elegantly Minimalist works; these gently conical forms recall a branch’s curve, a single limb’s segmentation into multiples, and the hollow of a tree’s trunk. Considering trees as something of a mirror—roots below ground are a reflection of the branches above—Park plumbs the other theoretical crux of the exhibition: the fifth-century BCE Chinese philosopher Mozi’s assertion, “reflect yourself to know yourself.” Repetition is a reflection of sorts, and Park uses serialization of forms, material (wood, plexiglass, polyamide), and color (soft blues, purples, and reds) to splice the sculptures into a whole. 

Two pulleys, the wall-mounted Dream Pulley: Roots and Wings and the monumental Dream Pulley (both 2023) echo each other at the exhibition’s entrance. The smaller Dream Pulley: Roots and Wings is weighted by a clear plexi box full of Park’s signature conical forms, each figuring as a self-portrait in and of itself (the other side holds a collection of winged, butterfly-inspired forms). Its foil, the ten-foot-tall Dream Pulley, occupies a full corner of the room, freighted with a clear plexi sphere full of these self-portrait forms on one side and a single, sizable self-portrait in light blue on the other. Conjoining these two facets along the pulley wheel is a golden rope referencing the Korean belief in the “golden thread,” the idea that all individuals and families are linked across time and place through a shared fate. The tension between individual and culture feels more like an inspiration than an adversary, as the static loads of each pulley are ethereal in their color and materiality.

Tension is literally employed to defy the limitations of gravity with The Dark Blooms and Sings (2023), a twisting length of fifty-two stacked forms in undulating hues of blue, red, white, and purple. Referencing the “crossroad” divisions of branch and root structures, this accumulative piece stretches from the floor into the ceiling, as if it were growing. Color is a means for Park to mark time, and here, blue symbolizes perseverance and red ambition; the connection points of this work are a saturated azure, while its upper portion varies in pink and lavender. Purple—the blend of blue and red—likewise symbolizes a hybrid of tenacity with aspiration, and it’s the dominant color in Dream Dolly (2023), a 60-inch-tall clear plexi box. Situated at an angle along the gallery’s side wall, the work is filled with Park’s self-portrait forms in various colors and sizes. Like The Dark Blooms and Sings, Dream Dolly amasses these forms to collect into a whole, but here, they constitute a diary of sorts. The enclosed box on moveable casters is like a child’s piggy bank for Park, a vessel to fill piece by piece with savings for the future. That Park’s “bank” is a dolly, meant to transport goods for industry, just as his Dream Pulleys are, suggests his childhood between two economic worlds. 

Likewise, it’s tempting to remember the felled trees from Park’s hometown with the pairing of the predominantly wooden Continuum: Father and Continuum: Mother (both 2023). Unlike the other works, these white, black, and naturally-toned sculptures are placed evenly and directly on the floor, their monochrome implying a stasis. From their urn-like bases stretch a repetition of Park’s forms, which, with their seriality, suggest the possibility of an infinite sequence. Just as parents give their children a beginning from which to build a future, the bases are a solid footing from which Park has created entirely new shapes. Out of the old comes the new.