Roundcube Contemporary

New York, NY – Roundcube Contemporary announces the solo exhibition titled, "America the Beautiful: An Outsider's Perspective," in collaboration with COSMOS Gallery, of Park Joon, a Korean American photographer who is renowned for examining the Korean diaspora and the struggles and the triumphs of the early-generation Korean Americans.

 

In this solo presentation, curated by Julie Jang, Park explores the sublime landscape as a non-discriminatory environment and being, as well as the symbol of the vastness of the American resources and might. To capture the American landscapes with his camera, Park undertook dozens of trips around the country, over the road, as well as on the plane (for example, to Alaska), spanning tens of thousands of miles and countless hours secluded in nature. This monumental body of work is truly a serious undertaking, risking the artist's life numerous times with the dangers that the wilderness poses to humans, who are fragile relative to the mother nature. The journey that Park experienced, initially all alone by himself and later accompanied by his spouse, was not only of a visual exploration but also a survival project: he threw himself into the deserts with scorching heat, the snow-capped mountains with icy, freezing cold, and all the vast and unknown wilderness in-between. The result is a series of august and magnificent photographs that call the viewer's attention and sincerity. Park's art promises to be everlasting and impactful for the Korean American community in the present and for the many future generations to come. ​

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Park's style or character of photography is neither conceptually driven nor rooted in abstract experimentation; yet they often take on a strong abstract quality driven by the strong contrast of forms, the monochromatic color scheme (all in black and white), and the qualities of light and shadow. The artist confines the visual process or activity within the picture plane, within the rectangular frame of the photograph. The rectangular format of Park's photos serves as a kind of a pedestal for a sculpture or a bridge between our physical world and the imaginary reality of artistic visions aesthetic objects.

 

It should be noted that Park produces the photograph by framing a vision accumulated from the light emitted by the subject or the object (of his photograph), with his camera; yet the artist differentiates between our physical world in which the subject or the object has existed (occupying a particular space or trajectory and timeline) and the world of aesthetics, to which his photographs belong. (This tendency is common amongst the artists who similarly reject the conceptual framework for photography, concerning its ideation and production, which argues that art is life, and there should not be a boundary between art and life.)

 

The series of decisions that accompany Park's process involve taking the photograph in black and white, pursuing full contrast of clear highlights and deep shadows, increasing sharpness and introducing highly definite details, and straightening the composition with stable angles. The strong blacks subdue the shadows by reducing their details and internal contrast; the strong highlights extend the dynamic range and furnish the image with a great depth of information from the midtones to the highlights. Altogether, these choices and qualities combine towards the magical formula of Park's enchanting images, like E = MC^2, revealing the artist's pictorial intentions as an oxymoron of traditional experimentation - consisting of visual search within the traditional or classical format and presentation of photography (or painting). 

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While Park seeks to keep his photography self-contained and original, without references to external sources, his stylistic use of full contrast and strong detail for the "America the Beautiful" series is reminiscent of Ansel Adams, the American photographer who captured the American West. Other contemporaries of Park include the German photographer, Robert Hausser, and the Croatian photographer, Nenad Saljic. The high contrast in particular is intended to deal a full striking blow of visual impact to the viewers, which becomes Park's means of reminding them of the harsh and raw qualities of these environments. ​

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Links:

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Park Joon | Homepage