Anna Park’s large-scale black-and-white drawings in charcoal on paper and panel find a balance between abstraction and figuration. Boisterous parties and other crowded scenes of interaction, interlaced with tropes of Americana, are consumed by a flurry of drawn gestures and marks.
Parties and Petty Games
Starting with works like Petty Games (2018), Park began to depict crowded party scenes in which figures with faces distorted by the artist’s gestural marks seem to let loose of inhibitions. The artist captures a broad range of individuals and groups engaging in flirtation, laughter, drunken antics, and occasionally butting heads.
A self-described people watcher, Park expressed her interest in social dynamics in an interview with Bill Powers for Blum & Poe. Rather than any personal experience, Park credits the composition of these scenes to stock imagery of people dancing, cheesy pictures, and memes found online, which she has collected over time.
Tennis
Park often articulates themes of tension and release in scenes that seem to capture a brief moment of raw unhinged human interaction. In her 2019 ‘Tennis’ series, Park presents imagery of violent clashes between tennis players losing all restraint in fits of rage. Frantic brush marks result in abstracted features, farcically transforming the sporting figures into grotesque muscular beasts.
In Life (2019), Park’s abstraction enhances the sense of rage emanating from the figures upset by the board game they were playing. Gleeful and animalistic expressions of pleasure in Parent Teacher Conference (2019) present a moment of seemingly unhinged debauchery.
Mixed Signals
Developing her gestural language further in works such as Handle With Care (2019) and Mixed Signals (2020), Park’s subjects all but melt away into swirling abstract marks and forms. In Mixed Signals, a recognisable form emerges here and there from the sea of gestural marks: facial features, parts of limbs, striped drinking straws, desserts, and letters, among others.
Fragments of imagery can also be deciphered to unveil objects and imagery emblematic of contemporary American life. This is most evident in This Is America (2020), which features an American flag, designer sunglasses, and a striped straw, among other things.
Some works like the humorous First Marriage (2021) remain more overtly figurative in style.
