Luke Park

Luke Park builds new beauty from an aesthetics of imperfection, adding only the most restrained marks to a surface he leaves unfilled. He studied business administration at Hongik University and went on to earn a master’s degree in arts and cultural management at the same institution, and he has long held an interest in the traditional culture of Japan. The sensibility of the karesansui garden in particular shaped the manner of his painting, and under that influence he sets aside incidental elements and lets the movement of the brush alone carry the message. For the artist, to place anything on a surface is to reveal imperfection, and so his practice comes closer to finding beauty within the process of acknowledging that imperfection and striving toward completion. His recent work draws the forms of nature onto the surface and speaks of rest and recovery, inviting the viewer to pause. Looking past what is visible toward the substance of life, his paintings quietly offer an attitude the present moment needs, crowded as it is with the desire to possess.