Sui Park Sprout, 2016

Korean sculptor Sui Park’s (SPARK) work has a studied grace, expansive curvature seemingly wrought out of air and wire. All of this is brought into existence through a process that encompasses all the precision of handiwork with the largesse of architecture.

Combining every day and industrial materials, the artist takes her cue from traditional craft techniques, along with monofilament, and cable ties in works such as Flow. Made of plastic black cable ties, this work is often interpreted as a metaphor for marine life. Flow functions as a visualization of brushstrokes in the air, a mutable tension achieved by depicting abstract organic form through an industrial medium.

 

 

Flow 2016

 

Structure and embodiment are central to Sui Park’s practice, stunning armature revealed within lattice like constructions. The 2014 site specific installation Blue Print in an abandoned fabric factory explored the evocative power of the abandoned site. Focused on the colonnade (a fundamental component of the building’s structure) reflects the artist’s interest in revealing and aesthetics of architectural armature and underpinnings.

 

Wiggling Series, II-4

Sui Park uses mostly black and white color to express curvature, creating three-dimensional objects and spaces using two-dimensional materials through weaving and basketry, securing each object and space with monofilament and cable ties.

“These classic methods are used for building variety of objects as small as containers and clothes, and big as a house.

The sculptor’s process often emerges through an architectural working model, sketches and ideas are built conceptually and logistically, the structure becoming the exterior. Much of her work combines industrial materials with “natural” imagery, the intention being an evocation of the mystical or illusory. Sui Park seeks to reflect an ambiance that is seemingly static is in fact dynamic. Patterns and forms seem to echo the natural passage of time, and life cycles, an infinite rhythm that is reflected within the artistic process:

“A typical building process of basketry is comprised of twist and intertwines. Each step builds a row or plane that comprises a module. Making each module seems routine work, however, when modules are connected, it becomes a form of its own. I believe connected routine steps that form a pattern or a cycle magically leads to a character.

Through a connection of repetition, I attempt to capture a moment in time that encapsulates a certain point or steps in a dynamic or evolution. The encapsulation is an abstract form that is not limited to bio microscopic objects, but includes our values and sentiments, memories and expectations that may or may not change.” (Sui Park)

 

 S(H)ell, 2014

S(H)ell

 

Spume, 2015

 

RB: I noticed that your work incorporates negative space in a very dynamic way. Can you share your questions about the process, and your way of working through the interaction of open or negative space, structure and the viewer or visitor?

 

SP: I find less room to work with in a positive space. To me a positive space means that it already has a characteristic or identity that stands out in some ways. Negative space is hard to describe or characterize. Recently, a void space has been an extension of my work. My recent work explores anthropomorphizing, asking the questions:

 

• What if a void space were a living organism?
• What kind of structure contains the void? Old or new?
• Does the space always stay empty or does it allow another entity to enter, and if so, how does this happen? Does the space welcome the intruder?
• How would he or she survive and restore herself?
• If the void’s priority is to reproduce itself as a way of surviving, then could it work like a lining / membrane that peels away from the original face of the void?
• How would he fill his emptiness?
• How would she express r her ego?
• I attempt to visualize these questions and possibly bring the unnoticed to our attention.

 

Brimming Over, 2014

 

LEARN MORE @ THE ARTIST’S WEBSITE OR VIA BEHANCE