Sui Park: Weaving Colors Into Cosmos: Curated by Barbara Stehle, Ph.D.

Sapar Contemporary is proud to present a solo exhibition of Korean American artist Sui Park curated by Barbara Stehle, Ph.D. This show will coincide with Sui Park's multi-part ambitious outdoor installation at Bella Abzug Park / Hudson Yards in NYC. Sui Park’s biomorphic sculptures transform their environment; their effect is similar to the blooms of spring in a garden. They change everything. Her oneiric spirit brightens the mood, calls on fantasy and joy. Trained both as an architect and in the ancient art of Korean basketry, Park is a crafter of shapes and creator of space. With simple means and an original technique, she creates colorful soft sculptures. Her polymorphic creations form a mesmerizing world. Sui Park, a mother of two, seems to never have lost her powers to dream and invent as children do. She feels at times like a magician, turning the ordinary into extraordinary.

Sui Park has authored a language that is very much her own. Each year her vocabulary expands the reach of her monofilament and interlocked cables. If her technique is new, her manual practice is as old as time. It demands patience and rigor.  Some see her as a new type of textile artist as her knowledge of line is similar to the one of netmakers and weavers. Park experiments to discover all that her line can offer. Her dexterous fingers knot and bend to create a weave that is architectural enough to be self-supporting. Her understanding of her material — a plastic line — is akin to the one modernist trailblazers like Ruth Asawa and Gego had for their own — a metal line. Like them, she is extending our notion of what a line an do, what a drawing is, and how close it can be to a sculpture.

Both Park choices of monofilament and ties have a linear shape. This characteristic is fundamental to understanding her work. The line, as opposed to stone or bronze mass, defines these objects as drawing in space. Their shadows are full of expression, casting negative and positive compositions on the walls. Sui explores all possibilities for their surface to play with light and space. Lightweight, soft and flexible, the sculptures can occupy space at the artist’s whims. Sui explores all possibilities for their surface to play with light and space. Like most most polymer, Park’s sculptures are almost indestructible. Redirecting ecological anxiety, the artist uses the material not to pollute but to defy time with the beauty of the immersive environment she creates.

Sui Park is a New York based artist born in Seoul, Korea. Her work involves creating 3-dimensional flexible organic forms of a comfortable ambiance that are yet dynamic and possibly mystical or illusionary. Park has had several solo exhibitions and public art commissions including Immersion in Black and White at Sapar Contemporary in 2021, Pompom in Georgetown, Washington D.C. in 2019 and Floating Imagery at the Pelham Art Center, Pelham, New York in 2018. She participated in over 150 exhibitions internationally, including The 5th Textile Art of Today at Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovak republic where she received the Excellent Award in September 2018. Park’s artwork has been acquired by numerous places including Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Oregon and the City Harvest Food Rescue Center in Brooklyn, NY. Numerous mentions of her work and projects have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Vice and Colossal as well as other publications.

Sui Park’s education includes an MDes in Interior Architecture at Rhode Island School of Design and BFA in Environmental Design at Maryland Institute College of Art. Sui Park also holds an MFA and BFA in Fiber Arts at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea.