In June Park (b. 1996) is a painter currently based in between New York and Seoul. He received his BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently a candidate for an MFA in visual arts at Columbia University. Working mostly in acrylic, his paintings serve as fuel to research into immigration history and act as a point of meditation for concepts such as religion, trust, and family narratives.
photo credit: Alan Weiner
Thank you for joining us, In June. Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Thank you for having me! I’m a painter based in New York, and I am currently pursuing my MFA at Columbia University.I was born in Korea and moved to Chile at an early age, which has significantly influenced my practice as a painter. For the past few years, I’ve been creating acrylic paintings based on collected images. These works serve as a medium for me to meditate on concerns that are close to my heart.
What ideas are you exploring in your practice? What is your process like?
My painting practice is an ongoing collection of images that closely mirrors my life, interests, and curiosities. These personal reflections are captured with varying degrees of proximity and relevance. The subjects are often brought to the surface from a distance, collaged, and cropped—techniques that our generation is particularly familiar with. Through my painting process, I believe I can relate more intimately to these images, providing a different level of understanding and relationship with each found visual.
I’m constantly sourcing images and contemplating the context in which they were originally created. Painting attracts me as a medium for this process due to its ability to isolate a subject from its existing context, allowing for new interpretations and deeper examination. I’m drawn to the painting’s dichotomous nature—its inability to tell the whole story while simultaneously creating ultra-specific scenarios for viewers. This tension between the partial and the particular fascinates me and drives my studio practice.
How has your work evolved over the last few years? Do you have a mentor, or a piece of advice which has influenced your practice?
My work has evolved significantly over the past few years. I’ve been building an inventory of diverse images that serve as a reference library for my paintings. Recently, I’ve shifted my focus towards creating a cohesive series of works rather than standalone pieces. This approach allows the individual paintings to communicate more effectively with each other, creating a dialogue within the series. Given that my work has primarily been image-based, drawing from various contexts and timelines, I felt a desire to make connections between the individual pieces. This new direction has enabled me to explore themes more deeply and create more unified bodies of work while still maintaining the diversity of my source material.
What does “community” mean to you? How do you see yourself in a community?
Community is a place to fall back to. It is a place to rest your head. It is a fluid cycle that both expands and contracts. I was first conscious of the concept of community when my family moved to Chile. Many of my paintings have to do withthis memory and it often becomes the starting point for many of my works.
I am most curious about the boundaries of communities; the area inside the two circles in a Venn diagram. These intersections become an opportunity to create something new. In my work, I strive to explore these boundaries, bridge different communities, and foster connections that might not otherwise exist.
photo credit: Alan Weiner
What are you working on right now? Is there any subject or theme you’ve been particularly interested in lately?
Currently, my main focus has been investigating how images throughout history have depicted concepts of trust and faith through compositional techniques. This exploration has led me to an intriguing comparison: I’m looking at the tightly composed figures in European religious paintings, analyzing how they create structural elements within the canvas, and relating it against images sourced from corporate promotional archives that showcase trust-building activities.
In parallel to this series, I’ve been working on a more personal series – creating small, intimate portraits of crying baseball players and their fans.
Do you have any advice that you would offer to others.
I think one piece of advice that I found useful for myself is to care a lot and go in many directions– whatever that might mean for you. Painting, for me, has become the most efficient and effective way of caring for something. Because the subjects that I work with are derived externally, all the steps that I take to paint them come from a more internal place. I believe that the painting process closely mimics different acts of care. When you’re working on a piece, you stand in front of it, move near it, and then step back to give it space – all these movements reflect a nurturing relationship. The touches, the drying process, and the retouching and shaping – these are all acts of attention and care. This approach of cultivating a mindset of attentiveness and nurturing extends to all aspects of life and work for me. Care for your ideas, your process, and your materials, but also for the people around you, your environment, and the impact of your work is what I would advise others to consider.
text & photo courtesy of In June Park
- Website: https://injune.cargo.site
- Instagram: @injunee
