非池中藝術網

Grim Park’s artistic endeavors in the realm of contemporary art are truly groundbreaking. By incorporating an innovative twist into Korean Buddhist painting, he combines his exceptional painting skills and profound knowledge of the art form with his unique fantasies derived from contemporary art.

Park’s mastery of painting techniques, honed through years of apprenticeship, is deserving of great admiration. His works feature various flowers and decorative patterns painted in gold and silver, while the background is adorned with subtle pigments. The top layer of his paintings stands out with a special overpainting method, showcasing the exquisite beauty of Goryeo paintings. These works are characterized by elegantly flowing lines, intricate details, and a mystical luminosity achieved by repeatedly applying pigments to both the front and back of silk.

What sets Park’s art apart is his incorporation of emotions and ideas pertaining to the queer minority. In his paintings, young modern men take on the roles of guardian deities, highlighting their beauty, grace, and strength. Rather than directly depicting feelings of jealousy, inferiority, and desires for an ideal appearance or partner, Park expresses these intense emotions through cryptic implications such as languid gazes and brutal spear stabbings, evoking a sense of intrigue and encouraging the viewer’s imagination. Additionally, the artist reinvents himself through the persona of a tiger, symbolizing the constant fluctuation between main and subordinate roles in human lives, where Buddha or Bodhisattva always appear as main characters in Buddhist art. The tiger becomes a recurring element in Park’s works, serving as a vital device for his various narratives.

Buddhist art itself is a niche genre within Korean painting, and exploring it with a fresh perspective in the contemporary art world has been a rarity, especially when discussing queer narratives. Moreover, due to the presence of religious symbols, it is not easy for such art to be recognized as modern art. Therefore, it is crucial to acknowledge and support Grim Park’s endeavor to transform Goryeo Buddhist painting into a contemporary art form, as he overcomes various limitations and expands the boundaries of the art world. His paintings evolve from personal narratives of self-hatred and insecurities as a gay minority to narratives that celebrate and emphasize the beauty and struggles of the present, intertwining traditional Buddhist beliefs with the universal aspiration for equality.