Park Chae-rin is reflecting on her role as a creator and practicing how to find her voice. Though the events she focuses on take place far away, there are incidents that deeply stir her heart. The small lives that are forgotten amidst the flood of sensational and violent events, and the dazzling scenes, are something she often discovers. When Park Chae-rin resonates with the lives of others, she captures the forms that make her heart tremble in her paintings. She delves into her compassion for things that easily fade, the socially unaccepted beings, the concept of justice that seems solid but becomes loosened depending on the situation, the failed utopia, and the contradictions of distorted equality and neutrality. Through her work, she organizes the complex emotions that arise from everyday life and social phenomena. The ability to feel compassion for fragile things comes from the belief that within herself, she carries the strength to overcome fragility.
She has explored the relationships between herself, others, and the world in various ways. As an artist, she has been constantly experimenting, questioning what she should express and how to connect herself with the world in order to find the appropriate artistic language. At one point, she created works by burning hanji (traditional Korean paper) in the shape of a heartbeat and layering multiple sheets to reveal forms. While maintaining a certain distance from the events she references, this is not to estrange them, but rather to avoid lightly consuming pain. However, she also questioned whether the expression might become overly passive in maintaining this distance. What began as a reaction to sensational events gradually became more organized and subdued. Perhaps it was not passivity, but a heavy sentiment about confusion that was calmly revealed. To effectively convey a story through painting, there are times when explanation must be restrained, and only the sensory experience must be deeply revealed.
Park Chae-rin has also approached her concerns about passive expression in an intuitive manner. While she sometimes uses a canvas or panel, she has recently begun using everyday objects, such as window frames or bed frames, as supports or materials. The practice of painting on used materials arose from a sense of guilt over the waste created during the work process, but it also gives new life to things that have outlived their use. Her interest in socially rejected things may stem from a warm heart that knows how to care for lonely feelings. In contrast to her more contemplative works, she has also created pieces where she expressed herself from a more direct position. In her work made from recycled found objects, she observed how emotions such as the pressure from society, fear, anxiety, and unconscious emotional remnants appear in dreams, capturing the images that emerge chaotically in dreams as if recording them in her paintings.
Kindness has become a rare thing in this world. Though Park Chae-rin’s works may seem to speak of injustice and chaos, they might also be in search of the peace and equality that exist between them. A series of works inspired by her two-month experience in Thailand subtly captures the fleeting moments with people she met during her travels. She painted scenes such as a mother who couldn’t take her eyes off her child, or memories where people let go of labels like profession and nationality, simply sharing their impressions of the place, as well as experiences of feeling balanced in front of beautiful landscapes. She recorded moments when different times crossed paths in the travel destination through photographs and then reconfigured them on the canvas. Did the people in the place know that they were beautifully revealed in her work? The attitude Park Chae-rin is contemplating as a creator seems to be about finding ways to capture the true, most comfortable state in which people reveal their honest selves.
Without loudly shouting, paintings gently persuade someone. I cannot separate myself from the world in which I live. All humans exist individually, yet still within social relationships. In this situation, the reason we seek a utopia where everyone can be happy, resonating with the pain of others, is because of the kindness inherent in human nature. Throughout our lives, there are far more things we will never experience than what unfolds before us. The world is full of things that are impossible to understand, but in the end, we can only perceive the world as much as we know. That’s why we must look more and study until we can discern. What painting can do, I believe, is to quiet the world through the canvas, allowing us to hear the voices of the small things that are everywhere but easily overlooked. To do this, we must gaze at the world carefully and constantly ponder what to include and exclude from our paintings.
Moon So-young (Curator at Project Space Sarubia)