“Art is work to us who are living right now, it is our livelihood, and it is also the unfinished life otherwise known as human.” – Jae Kon Park

A post-World War II abstract modernist, Jae Kon Park ventured from his native country of South Korea, settling in South America to find new creative depths. The exhibition celebrates how Park found inspiration in his adopted home. Filled with bright and vibrating colors, geometric shapes, and strong lines, Park’s artwork seeks to find a truth that reveals itself in mysteries.

In line with an increasingly global world, Park juxtaposed congruent cultural symbols of Latin America and Asia particularly around the communal circle which he termed as the Mandala. According to Park’s own research and theory, his artwork grows organically, following a progression of forms – dots to lines, circles and squares. His art dives into collective consciousness to unearth prevalent, cross-cultural themes and to find unity with and beyond human existence.

Park’s body of work covers a wide range of abstraction. In a wider context, Park was part of a larger trend of non-Western artists, like South American artists Aubrey Williams and David Locke, who engaged with abstraction outside of strictly European context. In his paintings, Park connects and blends cultural symbols and figures across disparate time and space, from the Incas to the Chinese, thereby approaching abstraction from a non-Western point of view.

Heather James Fine Art is proud to be the estate representative of Jae Kon Park, a pioneering artist who blazed physical and metaphorical trails into the world.