Shatto Gallery is pleased to present a two-artist exhibition, Form and Formless, the paintings of Hyesook Park and sculptures of Sung Il Kim. On view from April 20 through May 18, 2024, the show features a vibrant selection of the two artists’ works that illustrate individual exploration of human’s body, soul, and spirituality, and the interconnectedness of life. Leveraging the unique visual cultures of the Korean diaspora, the artists’ works highlight the multifaceted nature of experience and culture.

 

Hyesook Park creates expressionistic paintings with bold and intense colors and free-spirited strokes that respond to both languages of the international and Korean art worlds. Park draws inspiration from the visible world and translates these observations into creative visuals that allows the audience to awaken their own creative consciousness inherent in themselves. In Park’s recent works, she focuses on abstractions, monochrome fields marked by scratches, drips, abrasions and collage. Working in a wide variety of contexts and scales, her paintings convey a sense of energy, openness, cosmos, and spirituality, pursuing the most primitive yet eternal beauty. 

 

"How vivid, how vital, how deep a sense of consciousness can I express through brushstroke and color? The movement or energy expressed in my paintings, with or without color, reflects my own psychological consciousness as well as that of universal space."

 

Working in two places, Los Angeles and Korea for more than thirty years, Park has actively sought for a reconciliation between the two cultures of Korea and the U.S. She incorporates visual elements from Korean culture into her works, combining Eastern and Western techniques and concepts. Through her paintings, Park searches for or creates space that she finds reflected in Asia and Western art traditions. 

 

“I search for depth of space represented on a flat surface. This depth of space goes beyond three dimensions to depict a personal cosmology.”

 

Hyesook Park has shown her works in various exhibitions and galleries internationally, such as in Beijing, Seoul, Paris, Los Angeles and New York. Her works are in the collections of Denver Art Museum in Denver Colorado, Oakland Museum of California and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. Hyesook Park received two BFAs from Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea and UCLA. 

 

Sung Il Kim, a ceramic artist and sculptor, features freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures in ceramic, rebar, and wood. Focusing on the human form, Kim transforms materials to reflect human nature and emotions, such as jubilation, solitude, and despair. In his recent works, his subjects consist of angels, where colors and emotions are rendered with the intensity of his distinctive humanism: love, kindness and compassion. Through the multifaceted symbol of the angel, he seeks to fill the spaces with new hope, some vision for developing a less alienated future. 

 

“I created my angel sculptures to remind humanity that WE are the angels of this earth. I have had people who have touched my life- seem as though God sent my guardian angels in human form. Through them, I was able to feel goodness, beauty and truth in every fabric of my being."

 

Sung Il Kim received BFA and MFA from KookMin University and studied Ceramic Art at El Camino College in the United States. He has shown his works in various exhibitions and galleries in the Greater Los Angeles area, including solo shows at Arium Gallery, Sabina Gallery and Love Art Studio, and participated in the Korean Artist Association Group Show and Korean Catholic Artists Associate Group Shows.