Choice of color, dynamics, emotions and considerations. These four terms combined give a first insight into Minyoung Park's new works. She chose the (Berlin) city forest as the background for these; a setting that is already familiar from earlier works: the green oasis created and cultivated by human hands, which functions as a stage for animals, people, fables and short stories. Minyoung Park's works tell such small and large stories, reveal the emotions of the artist herself and those of the viewer, and provide an insight into a green paradise right on our doorstep.
The choice of colors in each individual work is strong, sometimes bold, and always carefully chosen. Minyoung Park skillfully and accurately places colors next to and on top of each other, places foregrounds and backgrounds, and lets the viewer immerse themselves in a universe of ideas that is exciting and peaceful at the same time.
Stories and novels find their way into the artist's world, such as the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" ("Cien años de soledad") by the Colombian Nobel Prize winner for literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in which a ship's wreck is discovered in a tropical forest and becomes a contemporary witness to the fact that there must have been access to the sea at this point in earlier times. In the middle of a tropical forest, this is initially inexplicable, then astonishing and the artist's inspiration for her work "Trojan Horse", in which the Trojan horse is a historical object and the tropical forest is meant to represent the changing times.
The juxtaposition of factors that at first glance do not directly arise from the same root is a frequent occurrence in the artist's works. Whether it is the forest as a place that is constantly changing with the seasons, but is nevertheless constant in its character, in confrontation with hurrying, fast, rushing, sweating people who seek the peace of the forest in order to experience their own physicality.
The painting "Island" was created during a stay of several months in Paris and does not offer the viewer an absolute interpretation, but rather various ideas and mental constructs to help them find their own personal access to the work. The following thoughts are mentioned here: the large tree in the background, whose blood-red branch tips could bring to mind a dramatic sunset or a blazing fire, symbolizes all of humanity in its diverse and varied facets. At the same time, the painting also offers the fiction of an island, which can be seen in the center of the picture, as a microcosm of our society, in which the individual island state represents the individual.
The idea of the individual, the individualist, the person seeking a path is not only found in the works in which people are shown in dynamic movement. The painting "Man with a suitcase" shows a man in casual clothing with his arms hanging down, still in motion, who could be the guy next door. His head is turned to the side, his gaze directed towards the trees. The background shines in bright blue, which is reflected on the forest floor in front of him and immediately brings to mind a lake. In front of him is a brown leather suitcase. In this spot in the forest, which has produced tall tree trunks, wild bushes and long fern branches, it is an irritating image. And yet, on closer inspection, it is not unusual: the painting was created with the idea that everyone carries their own invisible suitcase with them throughout their lives. The metaphor of the (in)visible suitcase may be an unresolved life situation, a family mortgage, a complex, an unresolved problem, but it can also represent a positive life experience.
The longing for freedom, for air to breathe, for enough space for oneself far away from urbanity has always made the forest a place of refuge. The motivation for this can also be childhood memories of nature, the connection to trees, moss and bushes, and depending on the season, leaves or buds. The forest offers protection, shows hundreds of green, red and brown tones of nature, lets you breathe easy and welcomes and welcomes its visitors without asking. Every viewer of Minyoung Park's work is shown the breadth of the spectrum of what the forest can contain and what it can be a stage for.
