Page 8 - 박현철 개인전 2024. 6. 15 – 7. 9 새문안아트갤러리

Construction of an expressive world with Logos, beyond text and image

Seung hoon Lee (Critic)

Artist Park Hyeon-chul, with the Christian heart, has been laboring over making the words of God, that is, the contents of the
Bible, into objets in the form of texts in English or Korean, that fills the entire canvas in colorful array. The reason behind the artist
bringing text to the canvas rather than images seems to be because what he wanted to express through his work was related to that
which exists in non-figurative or transcending form, rather than something in a specific and explicit. In Christianity, the dictionary
meaning of the word Logos, which means the word of God, is “a universal principle that regulates the existence of all things or a
form that makes them unique things.” This universal principle and form of all things in the universe was God to Christians, and the
artist tried to embody such God as the Logos, the very texts that are the contents of the Bible, instead of a specific image.

Looking at his work, we find that the artist wanted to start his work by arranging these texts on the screen in an orderly manner
before describing the contents of the Bible. At this juncture, the artist shows a screen that minimizes any color change or change
of light and shade. Here, only thick text is visible, and the artist unifies the entire screen into one color tone to unravel his artistry.
This gives the feeling as if the original plate was produced for relief work or woodcut for sculptural works, and this part has become
a characteristic feature of his work. As a result, the canvas feels like an objetifide material, and you experience that it itself becomes
a medium that stimulates the tactile senses along with the visual senses. The artist wanted to create a medium through which the
reality as a cosmic order could be sensed and communicated not only through the contents of the Bible, but through the visual and
tactile senses.

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