In Search of the Color of the Unconscious: Park Suji's Refresh

Park Suji treats canvas as diary. A *refresh* series that traveled Seoul, Busan, Goheung, Gwangju — light and relationship layered in oil and spray.

Park Suji, KINDRED LIGHTS, 2025, oil and spray on canvas, 116.8×91.0 cm

For Park Suji, the canvas is a diary.

"Creation moves beyond simple expression to become a process of recording a person's thought and feeling. Leaving a touch on the canvas daily, like a diary, accumulates the artist's philosophy and aesthetic inquiry; the work that shifts through the flow of time functions as an essential element leading life itself."

That accumulation began in Japan.

A Brush That Returned From Musashino

Park Suji graduated in 2016 from Musashino Art University's Department of Oil Painting. Those years abroad shaped the whole of her practice.

"Experience in another culture is closely linked to the process of establishing one's identity. Rather than assimilating among people of diverse cultural backgrounds, a posture formed of keeping one's own color more strongly."

She continued her activity in Japan with BANKAN Gallery invitational shows in 2015 and 2017 before returning to Korea. The sequence of solos after became the artist's national map.

Refresh, From City to City

In 2020, Eoheung at Art Space At; in 2017, The Painting Is Fresh at THE PLOT GALLERY. Then from 2024, a series tied under a single word begins.

2024 Seolmijae Museum of Art, refresh
2024 Noeul Artisan Center, refresh Seoul
2024 Gallery 177, refresh Busan
2025 Dohwahyeon Museum of Art, refresh Goheung
2025 Gallery Chungjang 22, refresh Gwangju

Seoul, Busan, Goheung, Gwangju. An artist carrying a single theme through multiple cities of Korea, repeating the refresh. For a year and a half, she passed through spaces across the country under one exhibition title. In 2025, Black Hole was acquired by Dohwahyeon Museum of Art.

Interpreting the Unconscious

In 2018 and 2024, Park Suji gave special lectures at the Sejong Academy of Science and Arts. The title: Interpreting the Unconscious. The artist's own subject, a sentence she hands on to the next generation.

Color, Spray, and Presence

Park Suji, LION KING, 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas, 100.0×80.3 cm

LION KING — 2020 color

Her canvas mixes oil, spray, acrylic. The physicality of traditional oil meeting the instantaneity of spray creates a kind of breath. Recent titles like TROPICAL FOREST (2025) and KINDRED LIGHTS (2025) mark the keywords clearly: light and relationship.

Four SAF contributions carry different years. 2020's LION KING and TOGETHER; 2025's KINDRED LIGHTS and TROPICAL FOREST. Five years between, placed in one seat. Like binding a diary into one volume.

Four Works at SAF

Park Suji contributes four works to SAF.

84.9% of Korean artists are excluded from institutional finance. Sales of works by SAF-exhibiting artists cycle into a mutual-aid fund, returning as low-interest loans to fellow artists.

Leaving a touch on canvas daily is a record; the sale of a work becomes a record of solidarity. If Park Suji learned a posture of keeping her own color during her years abroad, SAF is a way for that color to keep another artist's color too.

Not Assimilating, but Together

In her years abroad, she chose "keeping her own color rather than assimilating."

That choice opens not into isolation but into relationship. The titles TOGETHER, KINDRED LIGHTS testify. That there is a way to keep oneself and shine with others. SAF is one edition of that method.