Chaotic collages of smiling ladies and bed room whispers that masks our darkest projections. Pace streaks that generate fixed calls to motion. Drawings that exude a craving for liberation. Emancipation that by no means fairly materialises.

Anna Park’s first museum exhibition exterior the US presents a brand new physique of her signature large-scale black and white drawings that feverishly seize the spirit of latest life.  Involved with the perpetual visibility and alienated self-awareness prevalent in our occasions, Park is a serious new determine in drawing immediately.

Born in Daegu in 1996, Park has swiftly gained recognition for her richly detailed charcoal and ink works on paper that teeter between figuration and expressive abstraction. Taking inspiration from fashionable tradition, communal experiences and extra intimate interpersonal exchanges, Park addresses the cultural building and notion of identification, sexuality, and energy inside our more and more media-saturated social environments. In doing so, her works show a type of nostalgic montaging, as she remixes parts from varied artwork actions and types, together with Pop artwork from Andy Warhol to Marjorie Strider and Ed Ruscha, comedian artists akin to R. Crumb and Ralph Steadman, and the politically directed graphic collages of Barbara Kruger. Laced with signifiers from Park’s generational zeitgeist, her satirical drawings make seen the continued societal strain to adapt to magnificence requirements and gender norms that attain throughout race, sexuality and sophistication.

From this place, “Look, look. Anna Park” properties in on Park’s darkly humorous exploration of feminine identification by the lens of movie and tv. Having immigrated from South Korea to the US as a toddler, Park’s earliest experiences of Western tradition have been formed by present and previous American display tales and ads. Right here, she combines these with widespread phrases and fragmented feminine figures sourced from mid-century ads, comedian books, American popular culture and questionable historic texts. Acquainted photographs collide with disjointed dialogue, speech bubbles and captions as Park departs from linear narrative to reflect the complicated means of identification formation skilled throughout her childhood.

Past her private expertise, these energised photographs mirror the overwhelming nature of our day by day info consumption and the perpetual accessibility of web tradition. The interaction of textual content and pictures follows the fixed move of ideas amidst a sea of knowledge, altering the tone and intent of clichéd expressions. This hallucinatory expertise is heightened by Park’s incorporation of collage and cut-out methods to create drawings which can be part-sculptural reduction. Bodily occupying area with us, these artworks have interaction us in a contemplative exploration of how mass media shapes and perpetuates cycles of idealisation and denigration in our collective consciousness.

Curated by
Rachel Ciesla

at Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
till September 8, 2024