When the Star Falls Asleep: Jihye Park

In this new solo exhibition, Park’s original paintings explore the boundary between inside and outside and the importance of humanity’s connection to nature. Her detailed style depicts structured yet surreal scenes, where straight architectural lines break up rich expanses of wilderness.

From spiderwebs to mountains, Park’s depictions of both the minute and the sprawling create a contrast that celebrates nature in all its forms, with her search-and-find style creating immersive narratives in the details of her work. In Echo, a wooden border not only frames a forest but also shows the forest leading into the window itself, restrained by the borders of the painted frame. At first, the scene is endless, but Park includes details, such as the small rabbit, to ground the viewer in the landscape. It is in her dedication to these details that Park gives nature the reverence it deserves as a place of retreat and calm.

Through her architectural and structured compositions, Park balances the wilderness with man-made structures. The framing of uncontrollable nature behind sharp shelves and frames both reinforces the boundaries between inside and outside, but also highlights the depth in her sprawling landscapes. The combination of two recognisable but highly contrasting forms – man-made structures encasing uncontrolled nature – places her scenes firmly in the surreal. Where the Stars Sleep demonstrates how Park combines the surreal with the structured, with swirling seaweeds and brightly coloured coral viewed from behind a wooden shelf. This framing creates an unexpected perspective of the ocean-scape, while breaking up the composition and highlighting the unnaturalness of straight lines in these settings.