Whistle is pleased to present Mellow Melody, a solo exhibition by Junghae Park. This show features drawing and painting works focusing on the materiality of light.

Junghae Park has been working on the theme 'light' since 2017, and has particular interest in the virtual versus reality, and the boundary bet ween the inside and outside of cogitation. Park reflects on these bounds through the physical form of painting. The yellow colour she uses acts as a medium connecting virtual and real space , and it frames the contradictions between memory and feeling. Working so, she processes nonexistent landscapes through her personal prism into her own spectrum. Although warm and soft, and from nature and everyday life, Park interprets this yellow colour as 'bygone things' or 'just before dissipating'. Ubiquitous pleasure and private sentiment overlap in this colour, born from the weather.

Objects made of paper often appear in Junghae Park's work. A piece of paper placed in front of a surreally coloured scape is a staged situation that shows light and story, a reminder that the work and the viewer are placed tog ether in reality. To Park , it is a tool that induces three-dimensional imagination. It is an ideological material that sensually measures the distance of the object and strengthens the structure of the painting.

In the exhibition Xagenexx at Onground2, Seoul, in 2017, Park's works manifested the shape of light observed in a particular space into the symbol X—Mellow Melody recognises the change of light explicitly according to the weather and connect to its suggested melody and shape. Gazing at the light, to the artist, is a process that evokes the object and its background. Opening this exhibition is Micro Ground, communicating light, memory and the physicality of light. Examining the workflow, there is an apparent will to describe the distance of an invisible landscape through 'looking' and 'perceiving' in various ways. Heavy Cloud imagines the size of particles—the size and weight of a subject fluctuate according to the point of view—in a heavy cloud that sinks downward , its heft colliding with the lightness brought about by the heart symbols hidden within it. This is one example of how Park weaves iconography with titles, leaving clues for our interpretation; Teeth considers changing form and crevice as exposed to light, Flashback recalls the past day during that night, and Distorting Time twists the circuits of time.

Junghae Park (b.1989) lives and works in Seoul. She received her BFA in Painting from Hongik University and has been focusing on the 'materiality of light' in her work since 2017. Park has held solo exhibitions Xagenexx, Onground2, Seoul (2017) and Dear. Drops, Archive Bomm, Seoul (2016), and has participated in group exhibitions at institutions including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art; Ilmin Museum of Art; Hite Collection; DOOSAN Gallery Seoul; Busan Biennale; and Kukje Gallery.

Press release courtesy Whistle.