Park Keunho (chamsae)

Quanzhou has long been a major port of departure for maritime trade routes in Asia and one of the largest trading ports in the world. The Liusheng Tower (六勝塔), standing tall on the Xiangshan Mountain next to the Quanzhou Harbor, guided sea traders to port, and its majesty has been passed down to this day. Long ahead of the West’s so-called Age of Exploration, the Far East, led by China, was far ahead in terms of population, economy, and culture. The artwork reminds us of Quanzhou at its height of prosperity, its harbor bustling with maritime traders and exotic riches. It shines like a lighthouse in the exhibition hall, like the vast sea where the artwork serves as a polestar. Stepping forth before the artwork is for the audience an arrival at the final destination, the port of arrival. The tall cylindrical structure installed by the artist is there as a faux-verification device. Audience members are invited to bring the goods (spices, peppers, jewels, etc.) that were actively traded in Quanzhou, to be placed upon the table within the circular walls, and the installation’s sensors discerns the unique energy of the objects and creates light and movement. The energy (wavelength) emitted by the object causes the movement of the crystal beads attached to each unit that makes up the giant device. Light is scattered by the beads and their small movement become undulating waves together. The audience experiences these as waves of emotion, brought forward by contrasts of color, brightness, and darkness, with each their own stories (codes) with a place in the flow of history.

Since 2013 with SILO Lab, Park Keunho (chamsae) has worked on media works that populate and even saturate space with materiality. Using light as his primary medium, he imbues objects overseen and forgotten to evoke their feelings upon the gaze of the spectators. Through his artistic practice, the artist has experimented how human and non-human, living and non-living, material and immaterial existences can evoke feeling and emotion in non-living things. The artist empathizes with living things and non-living objects, and finds ways to describe through his works feelings projected upon animals, plants, and inanimate objects.

Fabricator Kim Junsoo
Lighting motion Kim Seohyun
*Reproduced after original produced by support from ‘Paradise Art Lab.’