The frame of needlework, the surface of vinyl, the subtle trace of ink. Drawn from a feminine world, Yooah Park opens an external world, the private. The intimate fabric of relationships based on affection, estimate, and respect that the artist, who has lived in New York these past years, links to her family and close friends.

There are her children, Candy e Davis Koh; her father T. J. Park, her mother O. J. Jang and her sister Jinah; her teacher Jong Sang Lee, the celebrated author Jung Rae Cho as well as her dog City represented along with her owner.

A flow of reciprocal exchanges with which Yooah Park renders homage by offering of herself, using the metaphor of food (rice), represented indirectly by the large hand-thrown bowl that is then placed in the kiln for its double firing. Always experimenting with techniques and materials, the artist emphasizes here again in her first one-person exhibition in Italy, Communion/Constellation – the matrix of her artistic language: the calligraphic tradition.

Black ink –dominated her previous works, including the series Untitled (Small Pulp) from 2000 and, in particular, transposed into metal in Writing in the Void (2006). Here it is “illuminated” (using a term borrowed from the ancient miniaturists) with the substitution of the brilliant tonality of cinnabar, mixed with other natural elements including cooking oil: creating a dense non-toxic liquid (Inju), used for seals. With a fine-point brush, like the needles used in needlework, the artist traces with confidence the outline of the precise identity of her subjects. Memory is represented via the photographs always taken by the artist – an intermediary vehicle important to suspend real time, and to avoid the “staged.” There is not a gaze, amongst the many subjects even though intense, that directly engages the viewer. It does not make for good manners, based on modesty and reserve as used in the East, to look someone directly in the eyes. Nevertheless, the rules of the traditional portrait require that the focal point be the face, rendering as secondary importance all other information.

In reference to this stylistic cannon, Park concentrates on the face, leaving clothing and objects that are normally used to describe the subject as sketchy traces. If, in the past, she has created handmade paper on which she paints freely interpreted ideograms, in Communion/Constellation she chooses as a support a light and flexible material – Liquid Vinyl – used as well in the textile industry. Among its fundamental characteristics is its transparency: through its interaction with light, whose source could be from either the front or the back and is revealed in the details (the eyes, the hair, half smiles).

Thirteen – a known symbolic number, within both Eastern and Western cultures – is an apparent reference to “The Last Supper.” Thirteen is in fact the number of large circular portraits from this type of a family album, surrounded by a “constellation” of smaller circles as well as some ovals. Using the cinnabar, which is also used in traditional medicine as well as in the creation of amulets against the evil eye, the artist takes on the role of the shaman. Painting the faces of her family and important friends becomes a way of caring for them as well as to protect them. As in her use of the food/nutrition, which is alluded to by the presence of the bowl, and is associated psychologically to giving (or withholding) affection. A dialogue that opens new and more complex thoughts.

Manuela de Leonardis is a Rome, Italy based curator, critic, and journalist whose articles and exhibitions feature contemporary art and photography.