박은선 작가는 1965년에 한국에서 태어났다. 서울 경희대학교 미술학과를 졸업하고, 이후 아카데미 디 벨 아르티 디 카라라에서 학위를 취득했다.1993년부터 그는 이탈리아 피에트라산타에서 살고 일하고 있다. 그는 피에트라산타에서 약 20km 떨어진 카라라의 대리석을 작품의 대부분에 사용한다. 그는 자연 에너지의 우연한 효과를 완벽한 균형과 질서로 조화시키는 비범한 방법으로 대리석을 사용하고 있으며, 그의 작품들은 서구 모더니즘의 작품들과는 구별되는 동양의 추상 조각으로 유럽 미술계에서 좋은 평가를 받고 있다. 박은선 작가의 추상 조각은 주로 두 가지 색의 교차 줄무늬로 구성되어 있다. 많은 서양 대리석 조각가들이 재료의 자연스러운 부피를 그대로 둔 반면, 그는 그의 철저한 디자인과 계산으로 깎은 두 가지 다른 색상으로 얇은 판을 쌓아 선과 색상이 강조된 회화적 공간을 만든다. 그의 작품에서는 거칠게 파괴된 돌들과 정교하게 조각된 돌들 사이의 긴장감이 완벽한 구성으로 인간과 자연의 불완전한 본질의 메시지를 전달한다. 동양과 서양 추상의 경계를 넘나들며 그의 작품 속에는 자연적이고 인위적인 아름다움과 과학적인 엄격함이 공존하고 있다.
Park was born in South Korea in 1965. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts of the Kyung Hee University is Seoul, and later obtained a degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara. Since 1993 he has been living and working in Pietrasanta, Italy. Park uses marble from Carrara, about 20 km from Pietrasanta, for much of his work. He uses marble in an extraordinary way harmonizing the accidental effects of natural energy with a perfect balance and order, and his pieces have been well appreciated in the European art world as Eastern abstract sculptures, distinct from those of Western modernism. Park’s abstract sculptures are mainly composed of alternating stripes in two colours. While many Western marble sculptors left the natural volume of the material as it is, he stacks thin plates in two different colours cut by his thorough design and calculation to create a pictorial space with emphasized lines and colours. In his works, the tension between the roughly destroyed stones and the elaborately carved ones conveys the message of imperfect essence of human and nature in a perfect composition. The natural and artificial beauty and scientific rigor coexist in his work, oscillating between the boundaries of the Oriental and Western abstraction.
Choi, Tae-Man (Art critic, Professor, Kookmin University)
Interest in both constructing and destroying the absolute form
Since 1993 when Eun Sun Park left for Italy to study, he has been active in San Pietra Santa, Italy and Europe as a sculptor. The accumulated structures made of stones in different shades suggest a formal affinity with Minimalist art because his sculpture grows as simple and solid forms of geometric cubes, perfect spheres, cylinder, and tubular rings are accumulated. Yet, his choice of the conventional medium of marble distinguishes his work from the literalist art of Minimalism. While having written reviews on his work in 1997 and 2008, I have observed Park’s work with particular interest and believed that Constantin Brancusi has inspired Park instead of Minimalism. Park’s work is resonated with some qualities of Brancusi’s work, which has become a classic of the twentieth-century sculpture. The columnar structure formed with accumulated identical units, which grows into a unique form, is reminiscent of Brancusi’s columns. Brancusi’s The Endless Column of 1937 was commissioned to commemorate the Romanian soldiers lost along the Jiu River during the First World War. Although the motif of column was evolved from his earlier wooden columnar structures started in 1918, Brancusi had a particular interest in the simplified organic forms such as bird, fish, and human head. As William Tucker has pointed out, the characteristic of Brancusi’s work is the egg-shaped form, which suggests the origin of life. Brancusi’s columns are said to have been influenced by the columns of houses in the Romania countryside, by the remains of Roman imperial period left in Romania, or by African totems. It may be too simple to trace Park’s inspiration from Brancusi’s column mainly based on the formal similarities. As Brancusi’s The Endless Column was evolved from various cultural traditions to form a unique form, so has Park’s work been grown out of certain traditions which include Brancusi.
Eun Sun Park’s work pays homage to Brancusi who sought the essential form in sculpture and shows particular interest in the Minimalist search for the simple and absolute form. Whereas Brancusi sought for the essential form symbolizing life by means of organic abstraction, Park has constructed forms by building up structures, which are reminiscent of civilization rather than nature. While Minimalist art eliminates humanity in its impersonal objects, Park goes beyond what Donald Judd has once said ‘specific object’ by constructing simple structures while incorporating the elegant and decorative texture of marble. In particular, the disrupted void left in the middle of the accumulated structures reveals that Park goes beyond Brancusi or Minimalist art to open a new possibility. The void may suggest the rise and fall of civilization, or intend to express the contraction and expansion of movement through the tension between the hard stone and some explosive force. While Park’s work seeks an absolute form, it shows the process of destruction of the very form.
Architectonic structure
It is also noteworthy that Park’s method to accumulate and repeat identical units has affinity to an architectural structure. Luciano Caramel suggests that Park’s work may have been inspired by medieval architecture. Caramel points out that Park has been fascinated by the façade and columns of the Romanesque church in Pietra Santa where Park lives. What would Park have discovered in the Romanesque architecture? He would have found balance, order, harmony, and perfection, which could be brought by the repetition of simple forms. It evokes a sense of beauty with clarity, which cannot be experienced with complicated forms.
Charlemagne, King of the Franks, whose rule was associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, had his imperial palace and church erected in Aachen. The imperial church in Aachen boasts the authority with its simple structure consisted of harmonious use of straight column and round arches. The church was inspired by the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna and also has some comparable features to the mosque that Abdal-Rahman, Islam ruler, had erected while he ruled Cordoba, Spain. The church adopted the arch structure found in the aqueducts built in the Roman Empire, yet added a sense of variety by alternating different shades of stones for arches. This architectural feature is found in the eleventh-century monastery architecture, which would form the Romanesque style, found in the St. Sernin’s Basilica in Toulouse, France or in churches along the road of pilgrimage to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Alternating different shade of stones in arches, columns, and walls is also found in the cathedral of San Giocanni or San Giovanni, the cathedral of Pisa. The repeated bands in arches might have been intended to symbolize God’s absolute world. Although the Romanesque style would disappear as Gothic style took over, the feature of accumulating alternating shades of stones has been rediscovered in Twentieth-century sculpture. For example, Daniel Buren’s Les Deux Plateaux (1985-86), installed in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris, consists of concrete columns inlaid with black stone stripes. Placed in historic buildings, the columns look less sculptural than architectonic.
Both enhancement and overcome of the decorative
The third characteristic of Park’s work is its decorativeness. The sophisticated method of accumulating layers of marbles in different colors enhances the aesthetic quality. If the decorative aspect surpasses content, Park’s work could be perceived as craft produced in a huge scale. However, the weight and complicated shapes, obtained by combining various forms, provide a sense of stability, which prevents Park’s work from falling into mere embellishment with repeated stripes. Since the repetition in Park’s work evolves into a variety of forms such as implosive shapes and intersecting disparate components, his work differs from that of Brancusi and of Buren. While Buren’s stripes signify Buren’s radical elimination of the bourgeois property in art by using impersonal and repeatable simple forms, Park’s work demands tremendous labor and advanced skills. Thus, Park’s work has nothing to do with Buren’s ideological position. It is obvious that the integration of stones with different shades has the influence from Romanesque architecture. Yet, the elevating structure comes from Brancusi and moreover it may have emerged from the structure of old Korean stone towers mostly located in Buddist temples. Since Park’s move to Italy in 1993, the living environment must have inspired the artist. However, it would be probable that Park’s work is resonated with Korean cultural heritage, apart from the religious connotation. The accumulating method is usually associated with architecture, but Park’s work is less architectural than constructive. In that sense, his work is comparable to Tank Totem, one of David Smith’s later works.
It is interesting that Park’s recent work intends to open up space and to be free from confinement, compared to his earlier work that focuses on the completion of form. That is, perfectly polished and arranged modular forms have breaks and cracks inside. The intended breaks suggest the transformation of the regular to irregular, project the desire to go beyond perfection, and moreover provide a sense of temporality. In other words, Park adopts a pseudo-archeological method to resist the non-temporality. Thus, even the newly made work evokes a sense of time because the cracks make his work to get associated with cultural remains. Fragments help us reflect on the vanity of life, on the time, through with remains become incorporated in our familiar environment. While we seek forms that can contain our thoughts on time and space, we would experience moderation, which is the major theme of the artist. Park’s work is sophisticated, yet can be understood as a process overcoming rigid criteria to produce perfect forms. A perfect monad can exist only in an absolute domain. Beauty erupted from unexpected breaks emits light and imagination would lurk in breaks. Breaks in his work serve as a small yet exciting place for our imagination and possibilities of new analyses. Straight road would be convenient, yet can ruin the landscape. Winding road could provide landscape. A closed perfect form could be suffocating but small imperfection invites us to come closer to the work and to reflect on its meaning. Thus, cracked surfaces and broken corners of forms in Park’s work provoke the viewer’s thoughts. The intersection of horizontal structure and diagonal column with stripes glorifies the artificial beauty, whereas cracks and broken structure in his work shows the elevation of accumulated soils. While showing both the balance and the eruption of forces, Park’s work stands on the border between construction and implosion, and creates the beauty with clarity, thereby constantly fascinating the viewer.
Translated by Kim, Hee-Young (Professor in Art History/Theory, Kookmin University)
박은선 작가는 1965년에 한국에서 태어났다. 서울 경희대학교 미술학과를 졸업하고, 이후 아카데미 디 벨 아르티 디 카라라에서 학위를 취득했다.1993년부터 그는 이탈리아 피에트라산타에서 살고 일하고 있다. 그는 피에트라산타에서 약 20km 떨어진 카라라의 대리석을 작품의 대부분에 사용한다. 그는 자연 에너지의 우연한 효과를 완벽한 균형과 질서로 조화시키는 비범한 방법으로 대리석을 사용하고 있으며, 그의 작품들은 서구 모더니즘의 작품들과는 구별되는 동양의 추상 조각으로 유럽 미술계에서 좋은 평가를 받고 있다. 박은선 작가의 추상 조각은 주로 두 가지 색의 교차 줄무늬로 구성되어 있다. 많은 서양 대리석 조각가들이 재료의 자연스러운 부피를 그대로 둔 반면, 그는 그의 철저한 디자인과 계산으로 깎은 두 가지 다른 색상으로 얇은 판을 쌓아 선과 색상이 강조된 회화적 공간을 만든다. 그의 작품에서는 거칠게 파괴된 돌들과 정교하게 조각된 돌들 사이의 긴장감이 완벽한 구성으로 인간과 자연의 불완전한 본질의 메시지를 전달한다. 동양과 서양 추상의 경계를 넘나들며 그의 작품 속에는 자연적이고 인위적인 아름다움과 과학적인 엄격함이 공존하고 있다.
Park was born in South Korea in 1965. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts of the Kyung Hee University is Seoul, and later obtained a degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara. Since 1993 he has been living and working in Pietrasanta, Italy. Park uses marble from Carrara, about 20 km from Pietrasanta, for much of his work. He uses marble in an extraordinary way harmonizing the accidental effects of natural energy with a perfect balance and order, and his pieces have been well appreciated in the European art world as Eastern abstract sculptures, distinct from those of Western modernism. Park’s abstract sculptures are mainly composed of alternating stripes in two colours. While many Western marble sculptors left the natural volume of the material as it is, he stacks thin plates in two different colours cut by his thorough design and calculation to create a pictorial space with emphasized lines and colours. In his works, the tension between the roughly destroyed stones and the elaborately carved ones conveys the message of imperfect essence of human and nature in a perfect composition. The natural and artificial beauty and scientific rigor coexist in his work, oscillating between the boundaries of the Oriental and Western abstraction.
Choi, Tae-Man (Art critic, Professor, Kookmin University)
Interest in both constructing and destroying the absolute form
Since 1993 when Eun Sun Park left for Italy to study, he has been active in San Pietra Santa, Italy and Europe as a sculptor. The accumulated structures made of stones in different shades suggest a formal affinity with Minimalist art because his sculpture grows as simple and solid forms of geometric cubes, perfect spheres, cylinder, and tubular rings are accumulated. Yet, his choice of the conventional medium of marble distinguishes his work from the literalist art of Minimalism. While having written reviews on his work in 1997 and 2008, I have observed Park’s work with particular interest and believed that Constantin Brancusi has inspired Park instead of Minimalism. Park’s work is resonated with some qualities of Brancusi’s work, which has become a classic of the twentieth-century sculpture. The columnar structure formed with accumulated identical units, which grows into a unique form, is reminiscent of Brancusi’s columns. Brancusi’s The Endless Column of 1937 was commissioned to commemorate the Romanian soldiers lost along the Jiu River during the First World War. Although the motif of column was evolved from his earlier wooden columnar structures started in 1918, Brancusi had a particular interest in the simplified organic forms such as bird, fish, and human head. As William Tucker has pointed out, the characteristic of Brancusi’s work is the egg-shaped form, which suggests the origin of life. Brancusi’s columns are said to have been influenced by the columns of houses in the Romania countryside, by the remains of Roman imperial period left in Romania, or by African totems. It may be too simple to trace Park’s inspiration from Brancusi’s column mainly based on the formal similarities. As Brancusi’s The Endless Column was evolved from various cultural traditions to form a unique form, so has Park’s work been grown out of certain traditions which include Brancusi.
Eun Sun Park’s work pays homage to Brancusi who sought the essential form in sculpture and shows particular interest in the Minimalist search for the simple and absolute form. Whereas Brancusi sought for the essential form symbolizing life by means of organic abstraction, Park has constructed forms by building up structures, which are reminiscent of civilization rather than nature. While Minimalist art eliminates humanity in its impersonal objects, Park goes beyond what Donald Judd has once said ‘specific object’ by constructing simple structures while incorporating the elegant and decorative texture of marble. In particular, the disrupted void left in the middle of the accumulated structures reveals that Park goes beyond Brancusi or Minimalist art to open a new possibility. The void may suggest the rise and fall of civilization, or intend to express the contraction and expansion of movement through the tension between the hard stone and some explosive force. While Park’s work seeks an absolute form, it shows the process of destruction of the very form.
Architectonic structure
It is also noteworthy that Park’s method to accumulate and repeat identical units has affinity to an architectural structure. Luciano Caramel suggests that Park’s work may have been inspired by medieval architecture. Caramel points out that Park has been fascinated by the façade and columns of the Romanesque church in Pietra Santa where Park lives. What would Park have discovered in the Romanesque architecture? He would have found balance, order, harmony, and perfection, which could be brought by the repetition of simple forms. It evokes a sense of beauty with clarity, which cannot be experienced with complicated forms.
Charlemagne, King of the Franks, whose rule was associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, had his imperial palace and church erected in Aachen. The imperial church in Aachen boasts the authority with its simple structure consisted of harmonious use of straight column and round arches. The church was inspired by the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna and also has some comparable features to the mosque that Abdal-Rahman, Islam ruler, had erected while he ruled Cordoba, Spain. The church adopted the arch structure found in the aqueducts built in the Roman Empire, yet added a sense of variety by alternating different shades of stones for arches. This architectural feature is found in the eleventh-century monastery architecture, which would form the Romanesque style, found in the St. Sernin’s Basilica in Toulouse, France or in churches along the road of pilgrimage to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Alternating different shade of stones in arches, columns, and walls is also found in the cathedral of San Giocanni or San Giovanni, the cathedral of Pisa. The repeated bands in arches might have been intended to symbolize God’s absolute world. Although the Romanesque style would disappear as Gothic style took over, the feature of accumulating alternating shades of stones has been rediscovered in Twentieth-century sculpture. For example, Daniel Buren’s Les Deux Plateaux (1985-86), installed in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris, consists of concrete columns inlaid with black stone stripes. Placed in historic buildings, the columns look less sculptural than architectonic.
Both enhancement and overcome of the decorative
The third characteristic of Park’s work is its decorativeness. The sophisticated method of accumulating layers of marbles in different colors enhances the aesthetic quality. If the decorative aspect surpasses content, Park’s work could be perceived as craft produced in a huge scale. However, the weight and complicated shapes, obtained by combining various forms, provide a sense of stability, which prevents Park’s work from falling into mere embellishment with repeated stripes. Since the repetition in Park’s work evolves into a variety of forms such as implosive shapes and intersecting disparate components, his work differs from that of Brancusi and of Buren. While Buren’s stripes signify Buren’s radical elimination of the bourgeois property in art by using impersonal and repeatable simple forms, Park’s work demands tremendous labor and advanced skills. Thus, Park’s work has nothing to do with Buren’s ideological position. It is obvious that the integration of stones with different shades has the influence from Romanesque architecture. Yet, the elevating structure comes from Brancusi and moreover it may have emerged from the structure of old Korean stone towers mostly located in Buddist temples. Since Park’s move to Italy in 1993, the living environment must have inspired the artist. However, it would be probable that Park’s work is resonated with Korean cultural heritage, apart from the religious connotation. The accumulating method is usually associated with architecture, but Park’s work is less architectural than constructive. In that sense, his work is comparable to Tank Totem, one of David Smith’s later works.
It is interesting that Park’s recent work intends to open up space and to be free from confinement, compared to his earlier work that focuses on the completion of form. That is, perfectly polished and arranged modular forms have breaks and cracks inside. The intended breaks suggest the transformation of the regular to irregular, project the desire to go beyond perfection, and moreover provide a sense of temporality. In other words, Park adopts a pseudo-archeological method to resist the non-temporality. Thus, even the newly made work evokes a sense of time because the cracks make his work to get associated with cultural remains. Fragments help us reflect on the vanity of life, on the time, through with remains become incorporated in our familiar environment. While we seek forms that can contain our thoughts on time and space, we would experience moderation, which is the major theme of the artist. Park’s work is sophisticated, yet can be understood as a process overcoming rigid criteria to produce perfect forms. A perfect monad can exist only in an absolute domain. Beauty erupted from unexpected breaks emits light and imagination would lurk in breaks. Breaks in his work serve as a small yet exciting place for our imagination and possibilities of new analyses. Straight road would be convenient, yet can ruin the landscape. Winding road could provide landscape. A closed perfect form could be suffocating but small imperfection invites us to come closer to the work and to reflect on its meaning. Thus, cracked surfaces and broken corners of forms in Park’s work provoke the viewer’s thoughts. The intersection of horizontal structure and diagonal column with stripes glorifies the artificial beauty, whereas cracks and broken structure in his work shows the elevation of accumulated soils. While showing both the balance and the eruption of forces, Park’s work stands on the border between construction and implosion, and creates the beauty with clarity, thereby constantly fascinating the viewer.
Translated by Kim, Hee-Young (Professor in Art History/Theory, Kookmin University)
