The Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College will present the exhibition Seungmo Park: Meticulously Snipped and Wrapped, May 4 – September 7, 2014.
The Dennos Museum Center is pleased to present the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of the works of Seungmo Park of Seoul, Korea featuring his meticulously cut MAYA imagery and aluminum wire wrapped sculptural forms.
The MAYA (meaning “illusion” in Sanskrit) are created by layering slightly out of line and separated sheets of wire mesh. After sketching the outline of the image on to the mesh, he cuts thought the layers to varying depths to create more or less density of wire cross hatching, which when lit from behind results in images that may look transparent, illusory, or shadowy.
Park’s sculptural works are drawn from ‘models’ found around him – a person, a piano or a motorcycle. He treats them without distinction as to their nature, living or inanimate. In his world, they become a wire wrapped cast fiberglass form transformed into a work of art.
Seungmo Park’s work is influenced by years of study in India where he stayed at meditation center from 1995 – 2001. Writing about Seungmo’s art works, Gim Jong-gil, art critic and curator in the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in Korea states, “Their conceptual concerns appear to address the differences between reality, existence, illusion, imitation and reproduction, while their visual characteristics parallel the avant-garde of new form sculpture.”
Park himself refers to a dream he had where he meets a young woman, and then from that experience goes on to create the MAYA works as a way of exploring ideas of reality and illusion.
We are excited and pleased to host the first solo museum exhibition of the work of Seungmo Park,” says Gene Jenneman, Executive Director of the Dennos, “These amazing works of art unlike any ever exhibited at the Dennos.”
Jenneman visited Seungmo at his studio outside of Seoul in October of 2013 when he had been invited to speak in S.Korea. During that visit he learned that Seungmo was a fan of the jazz pianist Bob James who often plays in Seoul. “We had already announced that we would host a concert with Bob, but had not set a date for it,” says Jenneman, “After speaking with Seungmo it was clear that we should present the concert in association with the opening of the exhibition.” And that will be the case on May 3, when there will be an opening for Seungmo’s exhibition and a concert with Bob James at 8 PM that evening. Tickets are available at www.dennosmuseum.org or 995-1553.
This exhibition is scheduled to be shown at the Marshall Fredericks Sculpture Museum, SVSU; and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts following its presentation here.Their collaborative support along withThe Art and Mary Schmuckal Fund for the Dennos, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Robert T. and Ruth Haidt Hughes Memorial Endowment Fund, TV 7&4 and Cambria Suites have made this exhibition possible.
The Dennos Museum Center is open Monday to Saturday 10 AM to 5 PM, Thursday until 8 PM and Sundays 1-5 PM. Admission is $6.00 adults, $4.00 for children and free to museum members. For more information on the Museum and its programs, go to www.dennosmuseum.org or call 231-995-1055. The Dennos Museum Center is located at 1410 College Drive, Traverse City, MI 49686, at the entrance to the campus of Northwestern Michigan College.