Dreamland Cityscapes

Sunga Park’s fragmented watercolours display mesmerizing and extremely beautiful cityscapes, which seize our senses and soothe our eyes.

Mark Twain once described the Mississippi Valley as being “reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it…” In fact, this could easily suit Sunga Park’s watercolours of cityscapes.

Living and working in Busan, South Korea, Sunga Park is originally a graphic designer and illustrator who has developed a passion for watercolours, particularly those depicting architectural images. Her uncommon and thought-provoking creations representing well-known buildings throughout the world defy viewers’ imagination insofar as they feature them as if they were melting and fading into the surface of the paper.

This technique results in exquisite, melancholic yet peaceful depictions of architectural structures which may remind viewers that nothing is permanent and that we are all meant to dissolve one day. The buildings in her art works seem to softly fragment into hazy colours, ultimately disappearing into the void of the paper deliberately left blank.

Sunga Park’s oneiric creations feature no beginning and no end, thereby inviting viewers to complete the structures in their own way. This, in turn, challenges them to take an active part in the observation of her watercolours and to be co-producers of the art works they are gazing at.

Having had no regular art school education, Park sates, “I can’t tell you what my exact art field is, but I want to show you something different.” And, indeed, she does. Resorting to the use of positive and negative space (what you see and what lacks in her depictions), she defies our imagination, invites us to play her game, to complete the puzzle.

Contrary to Valerio d’Ospina, an artist already featured in our blog, whose art works depict dramatic and disturbing cityscapes, Sunga Park’s mesmerizing and extremely beautiful watercolours create soothing and peaceful architectural structures which capture our attention and take us to “the land of fragmented dreams”, as Lewis Carroll mentions in  “Alice in Wonderland”.