Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

From the beginning of his work to the present, he has been steadily taking photos of urban spaces and living environments. In 2008, Gallery Lux (Seoul, Korea) was selected for a young artist support contest and held his first solo exhibition.

After studying in the UK, he returned to Korea and exhibited at Makeshop Art Space (Paju, Korea) and Gallery On (Seoul, Korea) in 2013, and held an exhibition to commemorate the award of the ILWOO Photography Award at ILWOO Space (Seoul, Korea) in 2015. So far (2022), he has held nine solo exhibitions, and most recently, he presented the exhibition 《We Built This City》 at Gallery Jinun (Seoul, Korea) in 2021.

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Participated in group exhibitions held at Korean Cultural Center Gallery (Ottawa, Canada), Daegu Arts Center (Daegu, Korea), Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea), Space K (Daegu, Korea), Seoul Museum of History (Seoul, Korea), Korean Cultural Center UK (London, UK), Dong-gang Museum of Photography (Yeongwol, Korea).

Awards (Selected)

He was selected as the 1st SKOPF (KT&G Sangsangmadang Korean Photographer’s Fellowship, Korea) and won the 6th ILWOO Photography Award exhibition section (ILWOO Foundation, Korea).

Collections (Selected)

His works are in collections of various museums and foundations such as The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art(Gwacheon, Korea), ILWOO Foundation, Daegu Museum of Art(Daegu, Korea), Goeun Museum of Photography, (Busan, Korea), Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul, Korea), The Sovereig Art Foundation (Hong Kong).

Originality & Identity

‘Observing’ is an attempt to look into the whole, not into details. It is easy to discover a schematic structure by applying a high-level view. The photography of Park Chanmin explores the structure of urban areas and captures the life essence of the city people.

“In all cities, individuals can only discover the difference in their life by knowing what space is built in the city.”

Park Chanmin’s various photographic series are somewhat different in material and form. He completes his work through post-finishing using graphic programs by inserting city building images on the screen. In this process, the artist removes certain elements in the image, such as the name of apartment buildings or the windows on the exterior walls. It is the artist’s underlying assumption behind his works, delivering his awareness of problems through a strategy of contextualising the photographed photos by erasing some of the spatial information.

The landscape of the entire city shows the overall impression as compressed visuals such as the structure of the city and the collaborative life of the city people. As the reality of nature and the city is left behind, it still looks somewhat realistic. However, the audience can easily find the traces and areas of tampering applied by the artist. Naturally, the audience actively understands the interpretation of the work by observing what the artist has erased and what remains without erasing.

Park Chanmin reveals the structure of the desire underlying modern society in his photographs. His photographs visualize the universal essence of urban space while carefully evoking awareness of standardized urban life. His photographs visualise the universal essence of urban space. At the same time, the artist tries to elicit different interpretations of the city by maintaining a neutral perspective throughout the work.

Style & Contents

The artist Park Chanmin is interested in Korea’s housing culture and its artifacts and social issues. These impressions come from his childhood experience of moving from a spacious apartment to a small multi-family living apartment. His first series of residential spaces, ‘Intimate City’(2007~2009), looked at a city landscape lined with apartments in a haze from a high location. The similar image of apartments that erased the name of the building or traces, creates a uniform appearance of the city in his works.

Afterwards, the artist studied abroad in Edinburgh, where he studied apartment houses in Scotland compared to Korea. In his series named ‘Blocks’(2010~ ), the vertical surface of the exterior of the building begins to be erased from the work. The artist removes the windows and balconies of the apartment building and turned it into a surreal appearance that was completely blocked off. A building, where no sound leaks out and no outside sounds can be heard from inside, becomes an anonymous space not different from a warehouse or container. It becomes a dead space where no communication exists.

Meanwhile, in his series work, ‘Untitled; The Level of Deception’(2012~2014), the artist raises the questions about the perception of urban space in which context has been removed through photographs of European cities with the background erased. The photography series named ‘Urbanscape; surrounded by Space’(2012~ ) creates a geometric landscape with the facades of buildings that are approaching each other closely. The simpler the surface of the building, the more difficult it is to feel the breathing and the sense of life of the people living in the building.

The perspective of Park Chanmin, looking at the place of modern people’s life, gradually expands from the apartment to the entire city space. ‘Citis’(2015~ ) is a series of photos looking down on major Asian cities including Seoul. A photograph of a city lined with abstract buildings like toy models is somewhat heterogeneous. He simplified the facades of buildings with flat, achromatic colour surfaces, emphasizing the lines and surfaces composing the space.

In front of Park Chanmin’s work, the audience discovers the universal image of a city easily found in any country in modern societies, along with the urban structure of cities like Seoul, with its vertically dense high-rise buildings. Also, the entire anonymized city, rather than a building, is faced with a structure that has lost its function as if it had become muted.

Constancy & Continuity

Although the spatial feature has been erased, the audience will be able to quickly recognize the place photographed by Park Chanmin through the terrain and impressions. The skyline buildings and the flow of streamline and roads are his own art materials. However, to appreciate his work, it is not so important to know where it is or to learn information about each city.

Park Chanmin captures various architectures and various cities in his works, but the purpose of his art is not to show their special typological differences. The city that he sees is a homogeneous space, with only differences in its geographical name and minor details. Modern cities dominated by the floor area ratio (FAR) and economic feasibility have standardized and mass-produced even the appearance of people’s life.

In his work, to express the essence of a city, the neutrally filmed image is modulated in post-production. Unlike the method of capturing the scene of an event with historical significance or directing a specific scene, it suggests a new context by using a more pictorial language.

In his photographs, the city is visualized in an abstract form. There are similar stylized abstract paintings that repeat basic characteristics by changing only the composition little by little. The artist’s work that utilizes photography as a ‘tool of expression that is based on reality but connects and expands reality’ shows a new type of modern photography. What will the city of tomorrow create and what will future photographs of Park Chanmin look like?