Exotic Animal: Jinie Park

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.