Serendipity is often associated with something positive, something of a happy accident. and if you have never heard or used the word zemblanity you can be forsaken. Wendy Park's newest solo show at Various Small Fires, Of Our Own, comes at a time when it is most needed, I think, a painter whose paintings speak to the mundane and quietly profound parts of a city that don't often get documented. In Los Angeles, though, this is the DNA, the fabric of the place and space, markets, strip malls, scatteredness and expanse. The part of LA that is so hard to describe in words is the act of driving for miles and miles, past new mini cities, new languages on the signs, new parking lots and shopping malls, and everywhere you look there is kinship, family, activity, movement. The city stretches on and on with culture and a blending of diverse backgrounds, square mile after square mile of life.
That's why it often feels silly to pigeonhole and place, to call a city one thing when it's actual DNA is something most Americans can relate to either today or in their ancestory: it is the immigrant story, making a home away from home as a new home. Park positions her work often in the Korean-American experience, but as the gallery notes, "This body of work was produced during a period of heightened ICE activity in Southern California, a backdrop that sharpened Park’s meditations on visibility, vulnerability, and the misrepresentation of immigrant communities in American public discourse. Her paintings serve counter-narratives: tributes to the immigrant labor, love, and informal economies that have shaped the American landscape." Park is eloquent in her use of details, to zoom into an idea and make it larger than life. We need this care right now. —Evan Pricco
