Korean Art Support Project Season 12
Park Ha-kyung - Folk Painting Expressed with Modern Sensibility

[비즈한국] The 'Korean Art Support Project' Season 12, a program designed to cultivate the fertile soil of Korean art, has begun. This initiative has now been recognized by the art world as a meaningful event for discovering and fostering artists. It has a solid reputation among artists as a project they aspire to participate in. The core keywords that the 'Korean Art Support Project' has pursued from the beginning were 'the acceptance of diverse flows in Korean art and the pursuit of developmental change.' As a result of these principles, it is credited with establishing a unique perspective on contemporary Korean art.

The reason humans are able to stand above all other things in the world is because they possess a great spiritual realm. It is said that animals and plants also have a spiritual realm. However, for them, the power of the material realm is much greater. Their life paths are determined by the principles and laws of matter. In other words, the principle of survival of the fittest is strictly adhered to. They act according to instinct and ruthlessly destroy the weak for the sake of survival. Nature is maintained by such laws.

In contrast, the role of the spiritual realm is much greater for humans. The power of the spirit is a distinct standard that differentiates humans from animals and plants. The spiritual realm is an invisible world. It is a world composed of emotions, reason, memory, imagination, wishes, and the soul.

One can do anything in the spiritual realm. One can become wealthy, a star, or a supreme authority, or go back in time to the past or move forward to the future. One can transcend space and go to other regions. The spiritual realm is a place where one can go to the ends of the universe, or even to the world of death, past lives, or the next life.

However, there is no certainty. This is because it is a matter that cannot be proven in the material realm. We live in a world where our bodies exist, a site dominated by the five senses and changing according to the flow of time. Thus, the process of conflict and tension, reconciliation and relaxation between these two worlds is exactly what our lives are.

The world we live in now is an era where the power of science, the guardian deity of the material realm, is overwhelming. This is because it proves things in the spiritual realm and displays the results right before our eyes.

Nevertheless, there are fields where the power of the spiritual realm is strong. Religion and art are such fields. In particular, the spiritual realm is like the hometown of an artist, as all art is an expression of the spirit.

Park Ha-kyung is an artist who demonstrates the power of this spiritual realm. She works to bring the images of the spiritual realm into a visible space. She depicts the spiritual realm through the visual art of painting.

In her paintings, themes such as childhood memories, wishes, dreams, longing, and happiness appear. While countless encounters, experiences, and environmental conditions met throughout her life serve as subjects, they ultimately stem from the artist's own spiritual realm, giving the work a deep autobiographical nature.

What the artist deals with most often are wishes connected to her own life. For instance, the health or happiness of herself and those around her, including her family. The format she uses to contain these is a modification of folk painting imagery. She transforms animals and plants that hold shamanistic imagery in folk paintings using her own artistic language, expressing them with a modern sensibility.

In particular, the composition of the screen, which seeks a sophisticated harmony of colors, is attractive, and the strong decorative quality makes her work highly favored by the general public.