About the Exhibition:
Andrew J. Park’s (b.1996) artistic practice is rooted in his fervent desire to display the human condition while exposing its inherently fallible nature. Nostalgic, liminal imagery is mined from the screens of nineties television and analog gaming. The fallibility of recollection is explored further by the artist’s incorporation of artificial image generation to produce the reference material that informs his compositions. By reimagining vernacular motifs through a mechanical hand that is unfamiliar with these nascent media platforms, the resultant image becomes akin to a half-remembered dream, imbued with uncanniness that is born from the distance between the notional and the actual within an imagined memory.
This tension is carried into Park’s practice of carefully rendering the likeness of these snapshots to convey connections between memory, image, and the emotional nuances of recall. Resulting artworks encourage the viewer to consider their own memories and reflect on interactions between past and present. Advanced airbrush techniques on gessoed wood panels lend Park’s oeuvre an eerily dream-like quality—one that inspires viewers to reconcile with all that is, was, and will be.
Andrew calls for personal reflection through a painterly exploration of VCR distortion. Often a result of physical damage to VHS tapes or image compression, his fractured, pseudo digital source material is mediated through airbrush acrylic to project the past memories of the masses. Hazy scenes evoke nostalgia while calling to attention the limitations inherent to memory.
Park’s almost real is preceded by his participation in Goosebumps, The View We Seek, and All Grown Up. Currently based in Los Angeles, California, he received his BFA in Illustration from the ArtCenter College of Design in 2018.
