Carpenters Workshop Gallery is proud to officially announce its collaboration with Korean artist Wonmin Park. In the exhibition which will kick-off the new 2015-2016 cultural season at the gallery, Wonmin Park will present new works developed at the gallery’s research space: Carpenters Workshop | Roissy. The pieces represent the next stage in the artist’s creative series ‘Haze’ in resin, covering a minimalist spectrum of grey, navy and white.

The use of resin in Wonmin Park’s work produces a surreal, dream-like quality reminiscent of seeing something without fixed contours, bound together by light and air. The artist himself says that he aims for a “sense of lightness and purity” and that the works “engage with their surroundings”. This engagement is something that drew the gallery to his work as Carpenters Workshop Gallery continues to value the emotional affect of sculpture.

Along with the impact of its opaqueness and transparency, Wonmin Park chose resin for its texture giving him “the sensation of painting enveloped by air”. This forms part of his exploration of substantiality versus insubstantiality and his artistic evaluation of uncertainty, ambiguity and vagueness.

In the painting process Wonmin Park begins with the extensive mixing of primary colour pigments to create an envisioned colour. After finding the desired colours the pigments are added to the moulds of the resin sections. A muted colouration is obtained within the slabs which maintain their translucency. An element that allows the colours to engage each other in the joints of the structures he creates. His designs sit on the axis between minimal and practical, but always contain an element of dissonance that creates a sense of balance and tension within the work.

Korea Now

In parallel with the exhibition, three pieces of the original ‘Haze’ series will be exhibited at the Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, as part of ‘Korea Now’ a group exhibition on Korean design and crafts. It will take place from September 19, 2015 to January 3, 2016, in the nave of the museum. This exhibition, in partnership with the Korean Craft & Design Foundation (KCFDF), is part of an ongoing Franco-Korean cultural exchange and highlights the diversity of Korean craftsmanship and its contemporary interpretations.

Wonmin Park graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, at the end of 2011. He has exhibited at major fairs around the world such as Design Days Dubai and Design Miami. His work has been included in museum shows at the Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi (as part of the Salone Del Mobile 2014) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Seoul, the city where the artist was born. Soon after graduation Wonmin Park sets up his own studio in Eindhoven, where he has been for 9 years now, and he recently established a production facility in Rotterdam. Recently, in order to further push the boundaries of his creative output, Wonmin Park became the third artist to set up a studio at Carpenters Workshop | Roissy, in suburban Paris.