I just found it very seductive, she tells me.
It made me feel good.
She still feels that way.
Photo: David Brandon Geeting.
Her drawings have the power and presence of oil paintings but are made from charcoal or India ink.
(It opens on today.)
Also, an impressively coiled snake, a memento of her teenage breakup with a boyfriend.
ATTENTION, PLEASEAnna Park’sLook, look., 2024, is part of a new series of drawings involving text. Look, Look.: © Anna Park; Courtesy of the artist and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York.
Its all about tonethe tone in which something is delivered can alter its sincerity.
Makeup and eyebrows and hair so kempt and curated.
I wanted to make her expression at least be something more like, What the fuck is going on?
Anna Park,First Marriage,2021. First Marriage: charcoal on paper on panel, 60 x 72 inches. © Anna Park; Courtesy of the artist and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York.
- ATTENTION, PLEASEAnna ParksLook, look., 2024, is part of a new series of drawings involving text.
Anna Park; Courtesy of the artist and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York.
Its a French ad for tampons, she says.
Parks pictures are cheeky, as she describes them.
Maybe Im just a cheeky person, a little cornball.
But its nice to have a layer of humor.
When I see her work, I often imagine someone laughing at a funeral.
Parks work was one of the standouts.
It is always thrilling to see the work of an emerging artist with astonishing drawing skill, Deitch says.
The emergence of these wonder women is one of the most exciting developments in contemporary art.
Over breakfast at E.A.T.
on Madison Avenue, Park tells me her origin story.
Their father stayed behind.
My mom was unconventional and adventurous, she says.
She wanted us to learn English, but I think she also felt very trapped in Korea.
The Korean school system is so intense, even from a young age.
(Her parents divorced when Park was 16, but amicably.)
For so long, I really wanted to be just a blonde white girl.
One of the new works in her studio,Picture That,includes a cropped word, blonde.
He really took me under his wing, she says.
I ended up going there every week.
This is where she started drawing with charcoal.
Thats how he taught everybody.
It was very classical training, and he was very honest with me.
He wasnt sugarcoating anything.
He instilled the idea that you have to put in the hours to get where you want to go.
When Park was 14, a family trip to New York opened new horizons.
I remember telling my mom, Im going to live here one day.
When it was time for college, Park ended up at Pratt Institute in New York.
I was high on life, and I felt comfortable with myself.
It took me such a long time to get to the point where I was proud to be Korean.
Anna Park,First Marriage,2021.
First Marriage: charcoal on paper on panel, 60 x 72 inches.
Anna Park; Courtesy of the artist and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York.
After two years of Pratts four-year program, though, Park dropped out.
She went directly to the New York Academy of Art, a private graduate art school in Tribeca.
She skipped most of her classes so she could spend all her time in her studio.
I just wanted to make my own stuff.
Her professional career started while she was still in school, in 2019.
(He has 4 million followers.)
I knew about his work, but I didnt know I was talking to him, she remembers.
I asked him, Do you do art?
When she found out he was that nights honoree, I was so mortified.
He was very sweet about it.
And thats how everything exploded.
(She has since joined the gallery, now Blum without the Poe.)
The works in her new show are three-dimensional.
She then covers the whole surface with rice paper and draws on that.
The work becomes an object.
Theres a stubbornness in me, she says.
I love drawing to the deepest of my core.
People call these paintings.
But what does she call them?
I call them drawings.
Does she see herself making sculpture?
Thats a goal that Im inching toward, she says.
I love dancing, but its all sober dancing.
I dont really drink.
And I just love listening to music.
She also enjoys going out for dinner with the painter Sasha Gordon or other artist friends.
Park recently broke up with the artist boyfriend shed been with for three and a half years.
She also listens to audiobooks, and her taste is eclecticshes recently listened toYellowfaceby R.F.
And shes a big fan of familiar TV shows, likeGilmore Girls,which she watches often.
It cant be a show thats too good or a show Ive never seen before.
Somehow she finds time to see exhibitions in museums and galleries all over town.
She also sees the shows of many young artists.
Anna makes it to every opening, says Gordon, which indicates how supportive she is.
Not many artists have built careers on drawings, let alone black-and-white drawings.
Vija Celmins and Robert Longo come to mind.
The absence of color was never really a conscious decision, Park tells me.
Its similar to someone picking up an instrument, and it feels right or natural.
But at the age of 27 and on top of the art world, her future is wide open.
She pauses, and then adds, But I dont know, maybe Ill start painting.
