“Looking closely, and for a long time, it was far from round and red. I kept thinking about whether an apple has to be round and red.”
Actor Park Shin-yang said he began painting after two apples given to him by the late Bishop René Dupont started to rot and he could not bring himself to throw them away. As he painted, he moved from asking how to draw an apple to asking what a painting is. He has since produced 30 to 40 apple works, he said, and over time the apples in his paintings became neither red nor round. He described that shift as finding his own “movement” — that an apple does not have to be round and red.
Park is holding his second solo exhibition at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts’ art museum. At a March 6 news conference at the venue, he said, “Everything is expression,” adding, “Without talking about ‘me,’ the word expression doesn’t hold.”
He also stressed the need to understand one’s emotions before trying to talk about them and express them, underscoring the importance of knowing oneself.
Park said that as he painted and examined his feelings, he traced the roots of his longing to a friend named Kirill, whom he studied with while in Russia. “Kirill is the person I know who looks at people with the most generosity,” he said. “He’s a friend with a gaze that opens up the possibilities of existence, a friend who puts you at ease.”
Like the apples, Park said he painted Kirill in different ways. “People told me, ‘If you miss your friend, go find him and meet him,’ but it wasn’t that kind of issue,” he said. He said he asked himself when and where the longing began, when it grew strongest, how it eased, what direction it pushed him toward, and whether longing is common or even necessary for humans.
He said he put into his paintings not only feelings toward the person he missed, but also his attitude toward those feelings. Interpreting his emotions and trying to understand himself, he said, naturally led into the work.
The exhibition is closely tied to that self-examination. Calling theater the background of his life, Park said he designed the show as what he described as Korea’s first theatrical-style exhibition.
In the exhibition, which he calls his “studio,” 15 actors perform like spirits between the paintings and visitors. The staging is meant to let the “fourth wall” — the invisible boundary between stage and audience — shift freely.
Park has described himself as having lived as a “clown,” and in his book ‘Discovery of Emotions’ he mentions the fourth wall, recalling, “The distance I tried to forget keeps catching my eye now.” In the exhibition, spirit-like figures in clown form cross that unseen boundary.
Asked near the end of the news conference why he pursued theatrical elements even if some visitors might feel uncomfortable, Park replied: “I don’t know why I shouldn’t try. No one knows whether it will be uncomfortable or enjoyable.”
The exhibition runs from March 6 to May 10.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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