GaHee Park

Born 1985 in Seoul (South Korea), GaHee Park lives and works in Montreal, Canada. While the naive style of GaHee Park's paintings recalls painters such as Henri Rousseau, the subject matter of her compositions is far from simplistic. Each of her canvases supports simultaneous narratives, often depicting romantic scenes where the idyll seems to have turned sour, or sexual acts at odds with their picturesque setting. Art history's favorite still-life subjects - rotten fruit, cheese and bottles - seem on the verge of rolling off the surface of the table on which they are placed, so inclined is the table. The approach to perspective in Park's work is forced. Yet space never seems to recede, cancelled out by a kind of flatness that only a skilful blend of texture and pattern can produce. Any indication of space comes from a framed element that seems to reproduce the scene, but with slight modifications, like a play on differences. A window? A mirror? Another painting? Park revels in these ambiguities.