A studio visit with GaHee Park
The artist has shown at Perrotin in New York, Paris, and Tokyo in the last year.
Earlier this year, I visited GaHee Park in her sprawling studio in Montreal. In the last year, Park has shown at Perrotin in New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Last month, it was announced that a large-scale mosaic by Park will join the permanent collection at JFK Airport.
Park’s paintings and drawings have motifs that repeat: dark-haired women with long fingernails and winking eyes, manicures that double as weapons, opulent trays of seafood and martinis. There’s a sense of languishing pleasure in Park’s tableaus. Like all the beauty is on the edge of decaying, the shrimp cocktail has overheated in the sun. Eyeballs double, creating a new meaning to the phrase “seeing double.” A lemon mimics a nipple, and shrimp tails resemble high heels.
This morning, I watched the trailer for Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, The Room Next Door, and was taken with the similarities between Almodóvar and Park. Both have an aesthetic consisting of colour palettes and instantly recognizable compositions. Both display a spectrum of beauty and the grotesque. The main protagonists are strong and fallible. Narratives shift from comedy to tragedy and back again. In her own right, Park is a director of a world depicted in paint. Is it Park’s own life she’s depicting, a form of auto-fiction? Or is it a fictional world of unlimited oysters and sex? Maybe it’s both.
