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Todo Surge De la Nada
Espacio Union, Mexico City, October 2021
Todo Surge de la Nada, 2021
The primary goal of alchemy was to produce an element that could be used to imbue any ordinary item with extraordinary characteristics. The philosopher's stone in Daphane Park’s universe is translated into an energy field where the art object converges with poetry, performance, ritual, totems and collective participation.
Through the dematerialization of the art object and the transformation of the spiritual, Park recognizes and questions contemporary social and cultural issues while offering vibrant routes to aesthetic and personal introspections. Her practice is aware of the artists’ role as a catalyst for everything that happens in the cultural context in which she finds herself. Driven by curiosity and a deep observation of her environment - as diverse as her extensive practice - Park combines narratives from cognitive anthropology, psychology and traditional medicine with elements of mysticism, to analyse the most elemental conditions of the human psyche.
Todo surge de la nada displays a happening that invites us to expand the emotional, the aesthetic and energetic consciousness. Beyond the traditional display, an uroboric narrative is evoked in which the beginning and the end are connected in harmony; an arena where everyone has the opportunity to explore, play and heal. For this, three aspects are crucial in the construction of the space: the void, the detritus and the game.
Evoking the historically acclaimed phrase by French artist Yves Klein, Le peintre de l’espace se jette dans le vide! " (The painter of space launches into the void!), Park's Multiverse is constructed from a set of overlapping pieces of painted cardboard that frame the void as the centre of a series of converging worlds. Her goal, like that of the alchemist, is to transform the world around her to imagine other realities that intersect and diverge from ours. Consequently, and according to Klein himself, it is in this void that painting acts most effectively on the bodies of the spectators.
Park's work is rooted in sustainable, formal production. Everything that is detritus in a series of work finds its place in another and is renewed. The series of spherical, sculptural objects are made from elements that were "orbiting and accumulating around the studio, the house, the closets, the garden--the work is from the detritus of the work (and living)" according to the artist. However, debris is not just a strategy for the reuse of materials--it emerges as a metaphor for the personal renewal and evolution of the artist and the audience: tearing apart to build.
In this collective arena, performing the game aims to transform and heal. The game is the antithesis of capitalist production. When we play we stop producing and consuming--an act without a determined plan or calculated behaviours. But it is also in this adventure, perhaps the most childish, in which the possibilities of creation detonate. Park proposes a series of "performance games" that invite personal transformation: a book of questions and an oracle are presented as experimental instruments that are activated by five performers in capes also made by the artist.
The conclusion of the show is detonated with 'Oleaje', a poem written on the coast of Oaxaca that synthesizes the artist's intention to truly experience the sensation of “making form out of formlessness”. Like a philosopher's stone, the poem is presented doubly (pictorially and orally), accompanied by a piece of music. By reading it, Park invites us to collectively observe and turn our environment into something unusual, extraordinary, magical: “from the void we find a space that has the power to sustain an infinite process towards healing”.
Alberto Ríos de la Rosa