Korean artist Seungyea Park (also known as Spunky Zoe) creates detailed mixed-media works that combine drawing and painting. Heavily stippled with a ball-point pen, the isolated figures centered on Park’s blank backgrounds resemble forms distorted by television static or gray, marble statues in a Gothic church — an apt summation of Park’s use of traditional techniques on edgy subject matter. Morbidly fascinated with the human face, Park manipulates it like a pliable object, making it warped and often grotesque.
Park describes her work as a study of fear. The artist refers to the condition of “monstrousness” — when people make enemies out of one another due to a fear of the unknown. She regards fear as the avoidance of something nonexistent, adding “I make my work wishing that I can be accustomed to and overcome fear by drawing out, and facing monsters, or the true nature of fear.” Take a look at some of her recent work below.
