Insane PARK: Avant-Garde Does Not Surrender: SOLO EXHIBITION

Insane PARK has long explored the realm of media and images, consistently creating works that reveal the limitations of conventional visual systems and the modes of perception we often take for granted. His first solo exhibition in five years, Avant-Garde Does Not Surrender, presented at ARARIO GALLERY, reawakens the avant-garde attitude through the perspective of vandalism. While vandalism may be a self-contradictory and rebellious act, it is also a movement that negates existing systems and generates new perspectives and discourses. Through works in the form of performance, fictitious documentaries created with digital technology and live-streaming formats reminiscent of social media, PARK continues his experiments dismantling the authority and safeguards of institutional art. For PARK, graffiti layered onto decaying buildings and messages scattered across artworks are not simply acts of destruction, but gestures of resistance against authority and oppression. He regards acts of scribbling and defacement as processes of redefinition—disrupting existing orders and hierarchies while simultaneously infusing them with new meaning. In doing so, PARK confronts the futility, emptiness, and fragility of reality, yet refuses to remain in despair. Instead, he focuses on humor, self-contradiction, and the act of doing itself, seeking minimal fissures and sparks of articulation that art can still generate. The messages directly inscribed onto the gallery walls and works are extensions of this attitude; like graffiti on urban surfaces, his images speak from within the cracks of the system.

Presented on the basement floor of ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL, this exhibition questions the possibilities of resistance through art, exploring the ambivalent forces of destruction and creation, authority and defiance that emerge through vandalism. While revealing the irony of vandalism operating within the system itself, it nonetheless embodies a belief that art still possesses the potential to act. From earlier works such as Post Vandalism (2022), which covered the interior and exterior of the Seoul Museum of Art, Nam Seoul Branch with graffiti, and Burning Down the Museum (2022), depicting the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in flames, to new pieces unveiled for this exhibition—including the large-scale multi-channel video installation Burning Down the Galleries (2025), Disposable Mask for Amateur Vandals (2025), and Disposable Mask for Amateur Vandals: INSTRUCTION MANUAL (2025)—the show offers a comprehensive view of PARK’s ongoing artistic stance and his latest experiments. Burning Down the Galleries is an installation that presents a performance video in which the word “Galleries” is filled with matchsticks and set on fire. The video begins with igniting the word “Lies,” meaning falsehood, and continues as the entire set of letters sequentially burns down. Through this work, PARK explores the tension between destruction and creation, revealing a new experimental dimension while extending his established artistic attitude.

Insane PARK has held solo exhibitions at various institutions including ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2020; 2014; 2011), ARARIO MUSEUM DONGMUN MOTEL II (Jeju, Korea, 2019) and Art Project CZ (Shanghai, China, 2015). He also participated in group exhibitions at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Ansan, Korea), Suwon Museum of Art (Suwon, Korea), Gyeongnam Art Museum (Changwon, Korea), NamJune Paik Art Center (Yongin, Korea), Savina Museum (Seoul, Korea), Alternative Space Loop (Seoul, Korea), Art Space Boan 1942 (Seoul, Korea), and more. He participated in a residency at Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture (Ratchaburi, Thailand) in 2024, Studio M17 (Paju, Korea) from 2016 to 2017, Akiyoshidai International Art Village (Yamaguchi, Japan) in 2016, Gyeonggi Creation Center (Ansan, Korea) from 2015 to 2016, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art (Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do, Korea) from 2011 to 2013, and won Grand Prize of The 2nd ETRO Art Prize in 2013.