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Artist: GaHee Park

For her first presentation of work in Japan, Perrotin Tokyo is pleased to present a new suite of paintings and drawings by GaHee Park. Born in South Korea and based in Montreal, Canada, Park’s art draws inspiration from her upbringing in Seoul, as well as her initial observations of life in the United States. Both personal and fantastical, Park’s paintings explore domestic intimacy and desire in her provocative vignettes of everyday objects and gestures. Eveningness represents the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Figures, either entwined or captured in moments of solitude, dominate Park’s compositions. However, her work remains anchored in the genre of still life painting. Park draws the viewer into her world and experiences through sensual depictions of the body or quixotic portraits, yet the surrounding details provide the narrative and context for each work. For example, in the painting Picture with Fruit, Flower and Flies, an image hangs on the wall and depicts a chiseled torso with a white towel loosely gathered around the figure’s shoulders. Flies hover around a table decorated with an elbow lamp and blooming rose. Framing the body, the erect reach of the lamp and flower’s curvature subtly references feelings of arousal. Cantaloupe slices and an open magazine indicate the immediacy of the scene, as if the viewer has pulled up a chair to indulge in both the sweet melon flesh and image of the nude body. The magazine spread features a face with three eyes and alludes to watching, observing, and voyeurism, themes ever-present in Park’s work.

The painting Domaine de Fatigue highlights the balance of psychological tension and whimsy inherent to Park’s painting practice. A cocktail, tray of sardines, and wine bottle rest on a tabletop sheathed with a mint green table runner. A lone person wearily rests their head on a table, their gaze transfixed on the viewer observed through the martini glass. At quick glance it seems as if the person places their head on their own arm, but closer inspection suggests the arm could belong to someone beyond the picture frame. This scene nods to familiar intimacy between two people, with the person’s nose comfortably nestled against the wrist of another. A hand with stiletto nails, a recurring motif in Park’s work, serves as a metaphor for sensuality, as well as dominance.

Many works on view in Eveningness explore the passage of time. Park uses seasons and changes in light to note specific moments, both past and present. Notably, wintery rain clouds decorate the wine label depicted in Domaine de Fatigue—perhaps revealing the past nature of the relationship portrayed in the eponymous painting. The apricot sunrise in Still Life with Slugs evokes the beginning of something— entangled slugs at dawn conjure the start of a new love. Similarly, the various times of day depicted in Park’s shrimp drawings imply a filmic sequence of events. Again, the viewer observes the breadth of Park’s imagination as light and color transform the horizon while the sun climbs and descends into the sea.

— Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, USA.