Hanmi Gallery has been working with Junebum Park for a couple of years now. Their latest venture is a project with the boys of Tonbridge School:
Digital Generation
Art from Fidelity International
23 January – 6 March 2016
OBS GALLERY | Tonbridge School | Tonbridge | Kent TN9 1JP
Open Saturday & Sunday 12-4pm and Mon-Fri for booked groups. Admission Free www.tonbridge-school.co.uk/obsg
In a powerful, immersive installation, artists from around the world will showcase the creative and experimental possibilities of digital technology. The exhibition draws upon the wide range of work in the Fidelity International Collection featuring seminal pieces alongside those at the forefront of interactive technology. While the works are forward thinking and technologically complex, they ultimately consider timeless themes relating to the power of abstraction, the majesty of nature and the need to document and expand the human experience.
Junebum Park’s project in progress at Tonbridge School. Image courtesy Hanmi Gallery
South Korean artist Junebum Park was commissioned to make a new piece for the exhibition which features Tonbridge School maths students. Park set them a mathematical puzzle and filmed them from above as they attempt to find the answer. The film footage has been speeded up so that the students’ movements resemble a video game; while playful and entertaining the work also invites us to question how we make our activities meaningful.
Artists include:
Jeffrey Blondes (France) Eelco Brand (The Netherlands) Dominic Harris (UK) Tim Maguire (Australia) Tatsuo Miyajima (Japan) Manfred Mohr (Germany) Junebum Park (S.Korea) Casey Reas (USA) TEAMLAB (Japan) Yang Yongliang (China)
Junebum Park (b 1976) works in the field of photography and video animation. Park’s distinct artistic approach can be summarized as an exploration of formalism, a distortion of scale and temporality, and an examination of the viewer-author relationship. By distorting the natural scale of objects and using sharp camera angles, the artist brings into focus the methodical and routine activities of everyday life; from walking down the street to parking a car; lending them a sense of humour and play.
Park’s Puzzle Series further explores these behavioural systems by creating a life-sized board game in which participants must solve an algorithm using a series of calculated movements. In observing the scene from above, the viewer gains a sense of order and structure and is caused to search for, or decode, the movement’s pattern. The works provide the viewer with an alternative, almost godlike view, which might extend interest beyond curiosity into an interrogation of the mechanisms and structures that underlie everyday life.
It’s fair to say Maths isn’t every school pupil’s favourite subject, but a school in #Kent has come up with a lesson that they’re unlikely to forget soon. Their teacher: a South Korean artist who’s been making waves on the international scene with his unique take on everyday activities.Junebum Park, who has exhibited at the Tate, uses photography and video to show a world turned into a pattern or a game.Now, in his first performance in the UK, he’s using pupils in #Tonbridge for his new ‘maths study.’ Our reporter Charlie Rose went to meet them.