Everything is ridiculous when you think about it

Written by Miles Stemp

Ryan Park came over to my apartment this Sunday and we had a little soup and a little conversation. He also dressed up in my clothes and I photographed him in my living room (pictured). This is part of an ongoing project that started while Park was living in Halifax that responded to the transient population there (much like Guelph, there is always a ebbing flow of people moving in and out). Park wanted to create not just a portrait of this ever-changing population, but also a portrait of himself, and his relationships and interactions with these people. With this work, entitled Medium, the decisions are left up to the participants; which outfit Park will wear and where he stands. As he states, it is a way of playfully acknowledging the influence between people, things, and self-definition as well as being a portrait of a particular community, typology, and fashion file.
The project originated from the fun of dressing up and a lack of studio space. It is ever growing and changing and becomes a litmus test for a community and a culture. As Park ages and friends flow in and out, it becomes a very poignant and beautiful, yet light hearted and humorous look at a generation.
Park describes his practice as idea based; he has a set of rules which he adheres to in order to complete a task. Sometimes the idea comes before the task, sometimes the task before the idea. Humour is an important aspect of Park’s work. Humour serves to alleviates the serious subject matter that is underlying in his practice. If something is not funny, then it comes off as too self-important; one can still acknowledge the subject, but the humour makes it less didactic.
Relocation is a predominant theme in Park’s work. Whether it is moving studios, cities, or artwork, he has an interest in responding to the transient nature of the world, while coping with its dynamic character.
Much like how Medium is about people moving around, Park’s fake rock piece (Untitled) is about transient art and the anxiety of making artwork and what will happen to it. This piece emerged from the destruction of older sculptures that were not working out. While he was destroying them, he realized the beauty of the rubble. As a way of recycling the work, he took the rubble and sanded the objects down to make them look like eroded river rocks. They are also very playful and funny objects. Yet their bright colours and outlandish mysticism, belies their true origin, riddled with the anxiety and stress that comes from making art and being an artist.

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