Park Hong-gu

In Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, where a plain wide spreads and sunlight

shimmers, there is a small world that Park built.

A house with a small pond, garden and studio place where it used

to be a barn, is the creative space and haven for Park and his family.

“Family is more important to me than anything else. I suffered too

much when I was young because I was poor. I started working at

carpentry early to make money. After I met my wife
and got married, I found out what happiness is.”

 His passionate love for his son also led him to become a full-

time artist while running a woodworking shop for custom

furniture.

"As my child grew up, I learned that he was talented.

I want to show and experience good things around the

world but I didn't have the setting to do it. What I could do

for a child with artistic talent was to make the most beautiful

thing I could make out of my talent, and to show him the process,

which I thought was the best thing I could do for him."

 After deciding to become an artist, his family, who set up a studio, a house

where he could display his work, shared everything with him and his son is absorbing

all of his father’s gift and talent, dreaming to become an artist.

Park Hong-gu's work is of nature and is very personal at the same time.

 Park begins his work of cutting and trimming wood by observing the material. Unlike ordinary woodcutters who plan certain forms and begin work, Park pays attention to the tree itself.

"There are already too many good designs in the world that can be made with furniture. So I thought about changing the texture of the wood. Rather than using tools, you can pat the surface with stones, reeds, or branches around it, and burn it with fire.”

 The process of applying texture onto the surface using nearby stones and branches, rather than conventional tools, is ascetic and performative. The wooden surface, which has been beaten and burned thousands of times, becomes the work like no other.

Major exhibitions:
 In Korea:
2020.7.9-25-Abstract Charcoal Drawings 2020 (Woong Gallery)
2018 Korea Exhibition of Modern Crafts (Ulsan Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art)
2017. 6.7-30 - Park Hong-Gu Charcoal Drawings 2017 (Gallery We)
2016.9.29–10.15 - Abstract Charcoal Drawings 1610 (And N Gallery)
2015.5.6-18 - The Second Sentimental Tale (Gana Insa Art Center)
2015 Special Exhibition/The Making Process(Cheongju International Craft Biennale

Special Exhibition)

 Exhibitions overseas:
2016 21st Triennale di Milano
2017 TRESOR CONTEMPORARY CRAFT (Basel, Swiss)
2018 London Collect
2018 Saatchi Gallery
2018 Korean Connection (Scottish Gallery)

Collection:
Victoria & Albert Museum

LOEWE FOUNDATION

"I always imagine before I work. The tree itself changes over time, and we first imagine and experiment what would happen if we process the wood with something other than a conventional tool. I always give attention to my surroundings and try to maintain a certain tension so that my body can always be ready for the creative process. It is like keeping your body's engine on all the time.

 It is the abstract charcoal drawing series that was created over such ex-periments. The surface of the tree is charred to create an ink colour, and wood is burned as if drawing with fire using reeds. Also, wood is orna-mented in various ways as if cutting wood with a pharynx.

"Working in a remote place made me feel shabby. That's why I wanted to embellish my work.”
 

As he repeatedly beats, cuts, and burns trees with stones, an idea of form come to his head. This is the point of inflexion his work becomes more of an artwork than a craft.

Park already has become one of the leading craftsmen and artists of Korea and has held numerous exhibitions in the past twenty years including ones at the Saatchi Gallery and the Scottish Gallery in 2018. His woodwork, propelled by the love for his family, is expandinginto the world of pure art, cementing his unique characters.