Head Games

work by Vivien Park

Opening reception:

Friday November 9, 2007 from 7-11pm
Show runs from November 10- December 7

Closing Reception/Lucia's Birthday Party

Friday, Decemember 7 9pm-12am 

open Sundays 12-5pm or call/email for appointment

Vivien Park’s first solo show entitled “Head Games” consists of two installations, asking viewers to shift back and forth between active and passive observation.  In the main gallery, clusters of “head spaces” hang from the ceiling. Upon first glance they are presented as conventional suspended sculpture. They in fact present multiple methods of engagement; viewers are encouraged to place their heads in these constructed planes.

In the new project room, Park installs a restricted space. Taking from her geometric paintings, what started out as a small living space is systematically undermined by a repetitive process of construction. Subverting any desire to enter, it reduces the room into a picture plane with limiting viewing angles.

Initially a painter, her tight geometric line paintings seem to run back and forth through the picture plane. An unbelievable understanding of angles, color and perspective her paintings were so convincing that it was only logical she began to build installations. Using common and secondary materials she is able to take the lines of her paintings and create them in “real space.” By restricting and forcing a specific viewpoint, Park’s brutal and delicate installations are a perfect blend of painting and sculpture.

Park’s fascination with transitory spaces began as a young child growing up in Hong Kong, a city in a simultaneous state of constructing and deconstructing. Ideas of growth, instability and decay were visually represented by images of structures that were half-formed and exposed. As an immigrant living in the states, she carries these ideas from the physical into the social and psychological, often focusing on the tiny gaps between the two sides of established constructs.