ZEN MASTER EYEBALL

In this exhibition, Park draws upon temple murals and Joseon-dynasty folk paintings, reinterpreting vernacular aesthetics to foreground elements of the grotesque, the sublime, fantasy, and humor. By interweaving, condensing, and exaggerating the visual languages of Buddhist hanging scrolls (known in Korea as taenghwa), folk paintings, and even comics, he seeks not to preserve tradition as a fixed and

domesticated notion of “cultural heritage,” but, in his own words, to “awaken those concepts and images of tradition that have been dozing off.”

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In Zen Master Eyeball, Park shifts from the film and photographic media that have long formed the core of his practice to the medium of painting. Yet, scenes referencing painting—such as Buddhist murals and folk paintings—have appeared repeatedly in his earlier works, and the artist has also consistently expressed his views on painting through his exhibitions and writings. Through this exhibition, Park conveys his latest reflections on painting, focusing less on individual originality or personal expression than on a form of anonymous creativity that emerges through processes of repetition and transmission accumulated over time within a community. In East Asian folk and landscape paintings, images have often placed other images within themselves, while echoing, borrowing from, and imitating well-known precedents, ultimately to continuously renew themselves. What emerges is not the assertion of singular authorship, but a form of

collective originality—a theme that runs throughout the works in this exhibition.

zen master eyeball exhibition.pdf download