Jinie Park | Exotic Animal
June 5 - July 12, 2025
First Thursday: June 5, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Exotic Animal, an exhibition of new paintings by Jinie Park. In Exotic Animal, Park explores contrast, surface, and space, incorporating textiles, planned but uncontrollable fields of color, and cutouts to create paintings that are at once familiar and novel. Park emphasizes the exotic elements of her previous paintings in these new works through the exaggeration of contrast between painted and unpainted areas, and the looseness and excessiveness of the materials, shapes, sizes and colors.
With the paper-like surface of her canvases, Park sees the process of making her paintings as akin to drawing. The washes of paint leave stains and create tension on certain parts of the paintings, while the unpainted areas are loose. These paintings continue the material investigation of Park’s Windows series, which incorporated exposed stretcher bars and openings which expose the structural elements of the works. This sculptural aspect of Park’s work is inspired by her interest in “gaps” in architectural spaces, which can allow light or space to walk through; the gaps in these paintings accentuate or interrupt the seams of her sewn-together canvases and fields of color, inviting the viewer to investigate what lies beyond.
Jinie Park creates ethereal works on canvas with thinly layered, translucent washes of paint. Through her abstraction she investigates and engages with the history and conventions of painting, applying paint on all sides of her canvas. Park received a BFA in painting at Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea) and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD). Her work has been shown at the Kimsechonng Museum (Seoul, South Korea), the Louisiana Biennial Juried Exhibition, School of Design at Louisiana Tech University (Ruston, LA) and in a juried exhibition at Weiser Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA). Park was awarded an Individual Artist Award in Painting from the Maryland State Art Council, the Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship and the LeRoy E. Hoffberger Scholarship from the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2016 Park received the Perez Art Museum Miami Picks Award during PULSE Miami Beach. Elizabeth Leach Gallery published a catalogue of her work in 2018.