South Korean Park Seungwan's contaminations on display in Carrara

South Korean sculptor Park Seungwan (Busan, 1986) is the protagonist of a solo exhibition, titled Coexistence-Contamination, running in Carrara, Italy, in the Project Room of Vôtre - Spazi Contemporanei from Oct. 14 to Nov. 4, 2023, curated by Nicola Ricci. On display are a number of works that are part of the Coexistence series: these are quotations from the classical repertoire, which Park Seungwan reproduces by means of the robot, an instrument that has revolutionized the world of sculpture and which, upon receiving a drawing, actually works for the artist until just before the final finishing, the process by which the sculptor erases the robot’s marks and gives the sculpture a “human” appearance. Park Seungwan deliberately chooses to leave the robot’s marks visible on the one hand in order not to conceal the nature of the work, and on the other hand to make manifest the ambiguous and dual nature of his work, which also consists of handmade parts.

Indeed, the Coexistence series, which began in 2022, speaks of a world characterized by opposites, also made evident by the idea of creating works with different materials, such as marble and stone. Park Seungwan creates fragments of the work, which he then goes on to glue together in a virtuoso process capable of finding combinations with various materials, from statuary to travertine, from rose of Portugal to marquiña, also going on to create unexpected movements, effects of solids and voids and light and shadow.

In Park Seungwan’s work, the real and the virtual, the human and the machine, the East and the West, the past and the future, different thoughts, different religions coexist. Park Seungwan’s line, however, is not a dividing line, but a line that aims to enhance difference with a view to cohabitation, coexistence. Coexistence, indeed. Instead, the citation of the ancient is motivated by the fact that, according to Park Seungwan, there can be no contemporary art that does not look to the past: we exist today because a past has existed, and if the past is set aside, if the past is forgotten, in short if the past does not exist, then we do not exist either. “At this moment, in this world full of conflict,” the artist declares, “my work intends to launch a direction of coexistence, that is, to make different religions, different beliefs coexist, projecting an artistic message that oscillates between past, present and future.”

In Carrara, the Korean artist, who lives and works in Pietrasanta (his sculptures originate in Studio Stagetti in the Versilia town), is showing his second solo exhibition, following his debut with Coexistence that was held in 2022 at Futura Gallery in Pietrasanta (although his outright debut was in 2018 at the Ugo Guidi Museum in Forte dei Marmi, with a double solo show that saw him exhibiting together with Chinese painter Hu Huiming). He has participated in several group exhibitions: The Imprint of Time: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Korean Cultural Institute in Italy, Rome, 2018; Park Eun Sun and her atelier, Chiesa Sant’Agostino in Pietrasanta, Pietrasanta, 2017; ARCOI, Korean Cultural Institute in Rome, Rome, 2017; Premio Arte Award Ceremony, Palazzo Reale in Milan, Milan, 2016; II Salerno Biennial, Palazzo Fruscione, Salerno, 2016; Expo ’International Contemporary Art’ in Milan, Centrale Taccani Trezzo, Milan, 2015; IV International Contemporary Art Exhibition ’When Matter Regenerates to Art’, Villa Bondi, Pisa, 2015; Linea Spazio Arte Contemporanea-Florence Biennale, 2015; Florence, Italy Biennale, Palazzo Fruscione, Salerno, 2014; I’m Not Superstition; Villa Bondi, Pisa, 2014 .

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Works from theseries

Works from theseries

Works from theseries

South Korean Park Seungwan's contaminations on display in Carrara

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