KyungWon accompanied me to visit Jongjin Park in his studio, which is in a town called Guri, south east of Seoul. The journey involved trains and buses and we ended up in downtown Geru you looking up at a semi circular glass fronted building. JongJin with there to greet us looking very smart and promptly took us out to lunch to an excellent Chinese restaurant. Yet again fabulously generous Korean hospitality!
I first saw JongJin’s work at Ceramic Art London and then again the same year at Collect in 2015. At the time he was studying an MA at Cardiff and has since gone back to study a PhD at Kookmin University, which he is currently working on.
He shares the studio with two others but his work does seem to take over a lot of the space! I was drawn to rows and rows of jars full of gorgeous pigments in a rainbow of hues. This is what that he uses to colour the slip he uses and his test samples, look so good the way they are all laid out in symmetrical patterns, he is thinking of making an installation piece with them.
His work is very distinctive and he treated us to a demonstration. What he does is paint individual sheets of kitchen towel with coloured slips and layer then on top of each other. His work slightly resembles delicate, crumbling confections of millefeuille pastry and it’s coloured in pastel shades like candy too! He layers up to 600 sheets in a single form. Incredibly time-consuming, labourious work, with astonishing and unique results. I am looking forward to having his work in the show!
