BEING: TWO METAPHORS
OCTOBER 10 - DECEMBER 18, 2020
David Eddington
Da Aie Park
Shatto Gallery is pleased to present Being: Two Metaphors, a dialogue between two artists making paintings that seem so different in appearance; however, similar in their careful, sympathetic interaction with their medium through their work practice. Both immigrants to the United States, their work shares the stance of reflecting on their present selves through nuances of their past.
Da Aie Park and David Eddington experienced formal art education respectively in Korea and England; their work still clearly references strong ties with the cultures and histories of the two countries. Then an interesting thing happens: a sense of response, subtle echoes that drift between their prospective paintings: “When making work we address and play with these cultural elements, in which we are then able to respond and make our own personal imagery”.
Da Aie Park, is painting ‘the where’ nature takes her to and ‘the when’ colours stop being colours. Her paintings come from a meditative process searching the truth of her being, reflections of zen.
In her works, one can see the painter’s ‘being’ metaphorically translated into fermented hues, appearing as fields of pigment that reveal little of her process, except that one may detect many delicate layers and at their edges with yet more contrasting hues as under-painting; deep-down in the paintings one can occasionally sense imagery, almost obliterated by the many paint layers.
David makes semi-figurative paintings in part freely painted, with evident brush-marks, often on large canvases, on one level a diary telling of contemporary issues combined with a parallel alternate worlds of abstraction, the Renaissance and promise of what is possible; “I am chasing a vision: a planet that survives. In each work I try to view my mind without thinking about it”. he says.
Although seemingly so unlike Da Aie’s paintings, the observer will note a similar responsive play on temperature, mood, colour and metaphysical questions as to our place in the world.
Curatorial Team
Yujin Iris Jeong