06 february 2023, Manuela Klerkx
Jaehun Park: Humans and How to (Re)Create Them
“My greatest goal is to use my research to find out what drives us as humans and whether we are disappearing as a species or contributing – through AI - to the creation of a new human being.”
Jaehun Park (b. 1986 in Ulsan, South Korea) settled in Amsterdam in 2018, where he immediately stood out as an artist in his role as digital sculptor, animator and simulator. Although everything in his work revolves around humans, there is not one to be seen. In Park's post-human landscapes, we experience mankind through the objects it has produced and the reality it has created. To make our reality – driven by consumerism on the one hand and a penchant for spirituality on the other– visible in virtual space, Park uses three-dimensional, computer graphic animations. The results are situations, interiors and landscapes as beautiful as they are dark and with which he confronts us. And yet you feel that there is more than what we produce and consume thanks to the meditative nature of his work. An interview with a promising artist in search of an answer to the question: What is human?
Jaehun Park, End of the day, 2022, Bradwolff & Partners
How would you describe your work?
My art is based on human beings as viewed from the objects they produce and surround themselves with as part of our capitalist system. I look for conflicting situations between different ideologies and political systems, which I then try to make visible. On the one hand, mankind is looking for material happiness – making capitalism as a stimulator of our consumerism, the perfect economic system – while at the same time searching for a deeper meaning than we find in non-materialistic ideas and rituals like Buddhism, yoga and meditation. My greatest goal is to use my research to find out what drives us as humans and whether we are disappearing as a species or contributing through AI to the creation of a new human being.
You have been living in Amsterdam since 2018. How did you experience the transition from Korea to the Netherlands?
When I first came to the Netherlands, I noticed that the churches here are much less prominent than in my country. Since WWII and due to the intensive contact with the U.S., Korea has a lot of Christians and famous architects from all over the world build modern churches there. In Amsterdam, on the other hand, you see more and more yoga schools with a Buddha image in every room, without the yoga practitioners necessarily being Buddhists. This mixture of cultures between East and West fascinates me. I think that the exchange of Christian-Western norms and values and Buddhist-Eastern wisdom currently taking place is enriching in both directions.
Can you tell a bit about your working process?
I always start with an everyday object or mass product – like a smartphone or a shower stall – as a symbol of our globalised, capitalist society. There are never people to be seen in my work, only ready-made objects, in combination with natural phenomena. Through the things people make, I show how they live and what they feel, believe or think. I grew up with the virtual world and make my art for and thanks to the internet. I get my inspiration from the real world, but translate it into the virtual world that combines the inspiring and aesthetic on one hand and dark, disturbing elements on the other.
Jaehun Park, The Last Iceberg, 2023, Bradwolff & Partners
Do you believe in the end of mankind as we know it?
Until last year, I created a kind of post-human, post-apocalyptic landscapes to answer the question of what the world would look like after the disappearance of humankind. To do so, I used AI and all kinds of automated technologies. Now I think that perhaps, after the disappearance of humans as we know them, there will be a new human species created by humans themselves.
What are your thoughts on the future?
I am quite optimistic because I believe in the positive values of AI. I believe that AI can help us figure out how to define human beings based on data-driven research resembling the human mind, the process of thinking, and even emotions and morality. Which is the same process as looking into a mirror. At the same time, I also see the dangers of an ever-growing machine spinning out of control through self-learning algorithms, threatening the work force and causing copyright and authenticity issues. Currently, we are saddled with a surplus of plastic that is polluting our oceans. I believe that between today and ten years from now, I hope we will have found a technological solution to that problem thanks to AI. That in itself is positive. In my work, I want to show the positive, as well as the negative aspects of AI. I am rather ambivalent about the future. We are facing lots of challenges right now and there is no one right solution. Evolution has been a chain of countless failures. In China and Korea, we talk about Yin and Yang: two sides of the same coin.
Jaehun Park, Shower room, 2019, Bradwolff & Partners
I first saw a work of yours in 2019, which was a 3D animation of a shower cabin where running water came out of the shower head and partly ended up on a rock. Can you explain that work?
The work ‘Shower Room’ was the first work I made in the Netherlands and I consider it a kind of self-portrait. In my culture, rinsing with water represents not only the cleansing of the body, but also of the mind. It symbolises a kind of meditative moment, a ritual that relieves physical tension and creates mental space. My videos are always very short and contain little or no sound or subtitles because I believe silence is important as part of how the viewer experiences my art: in an almost meditative way, as a moment of awareness.
The problem of our time is that every individual imagines himself to be a God, while we are all human beings and consequently, no more than a temporary phenomenon in the universe.
Jaehun Park, Overheated Windmill, 2021, Bradwolff & Partners
In South Korea, you attended art school, where you were trained as a painter and later as a sculptor. But once in the Netherlands, you started making simulation works. That's a significant change. What happened?
I realised while sculpting that I was working with far too many materials – like plastic polymers and polycarbonate – that I had to throw away afterwards. I was also becoming bothered by the toxins in those materials and in the paint I was using. So, I decided to start making works about waste materials rather than with waste materials. Similarly, I make work about people without them being in it. In other words, I no longer work with physical materials, but with digital materials, which I use to try to symbolise the 3D world, including the emotions found in it.
Why this approach?
I want the viewer to be able to relate to my work on multiple levels. And especially on an emotional and meditative level, as a personal experience that raises the question, ‘Who am I?’ And I want to expand this fundamental question to ask ‘Who are we?’ So, my work is not narrative, but symbolic and poetic. Everyone can come up with their own story based on what they see. I just want to convey conflicting human ideas and behaviours in a contemporary way.
Jaehun Park, Candle, 2023, Bradwolff & Partners
You have a solo stand at Art Rotterdam with Bradwolff Projects. What are you going to be showing there?
I am looking forward to showing a real premiere at my booth. I will be presenting a circular video screen – which has never existed before because I had it specially made in collaboration with a company in Taiwan. The result is a series of simulated moving images projected on a curved screen, creating a kind of video sculpture. The round shape of the video screen has totally changed my experience with and knowledge of video. There is neither a classic 16:9 widescreen format nor a round projection on the screen because the format of the LED screen itself is round. This roundness gives the work a geometrically perfect shape and Buddhist connotation. Because a round object has no beginning or end, but is infinite. And that is a metaphor for the turning of a washing machine or a planet, but also of the Buddhist view that everything is permanently in a state of change.
