 "Photo: Ji Sun Park")
Ji Sun Park brings the idea of cultural misconceptions to Cal State Long Beach.
Park, an MFA - printmaking student, prints and paints colorful, textured dollhouses as a way to express cultural misinterpretations about America in her native country of Korea.
Her printmaking collection of two-dimensional and sculptural pieces entitled "Dollhouses" is on display at the Dutzi Student Art Gallery this week.
"Not many people want to live in a traditional Korean way," Park said. "They want to live in Western Culture as soon as they get money. Dollhouses sometimes cost as much as an actual house."
Park said "Dollhouses" are a metaphor for wealth and social standing and many Koreans have a common misconception of American life represented through these houses.
Through her work, she wants people to understand that the way many feel about Western civilization and the reality of western life are different.
"I wanted to show a different perspective from most people," Park said. "I want people to know that my work has beauty but not everything is beautiful, candy, sweet and fun."
The pieces draw in the audience with their colors, textures and perplexities. The dollhouses were randomly placed on the canvas to convey a sense of confusion and weightlessness.
One particular piece displays an open wardrobe with a boring, plain, colorless building landscape in the windows. Within the wardrobe is a lively, splatter of dollhouses in different colors, shapes and positions, as well as other items such as Victorian chairs, vanity mirrors, tables and tea sets.
This can be interpreted as the view most people have of a dull life in comparison to the glamorized western style
High grades of pink, yellow, green and blue decorate the palm-sized dollhouses. The intricate brush strokes add texture and direction to each dollhouse. Park also layered colorful printscreen dots on each painting.
Park etched windows into the dollhouses to look as though they are indented. She focused on the detail of the negative and positive spaces in her paintings and added color stains and fabric for texture to her pieces.
A television with layers of glass screens stands in the center of the gallery. The top layer had large, colorful dots painted on, while the second layer had printscreen dollhouses glued on sporadically. This creates a confusion when looking into it.
Park attributes this sculptural piece to the theme of the dollhouses. As a child in Korea, many of the misconceptions she grew up with were due to the glamorized Hollywood lifestyles that were seen in movies, soap operas and TV shows.
"It's an old TV from the street," Park said. "It reminds me of the TV I used to watch as a child. That's where I got all my misconceptions from the fabulous Western life on TV."
Park drew a lot of inspiration from American television commercials and dollhouse advertisements. She said she focused on the colorful plastic look of American dollhouses rather than the traditional wood, plain-colored English house sets.
Throughout her cohesive body of work, Park ties her theme to beauty and glamour of dollhouses with bright colors, textures and prints in contrast to the lifestyle of non-American civilization through dull, non textured neutrality.
The collection of dollhouses took an entire semester to complete. The final piece in her collection was the TV and it took two hours to create.
Each painting displays a different, more elaborate versions of an American dollhouse in a sequence. Each painting shows the evolution of Park's printmaking from two-dimensional canvas with printscreen, fabric and paint to full-on found object sculptures.
Park said she doesn't want to be constrained to a canvas, and she is aiming to explore the larger and three-dimensional methods of art and installations.
"Dollhouses" will be on display until February 4th in the Dutzi Student Art Gallery. The student art galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; and noon to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays.
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