Spiraling from within the library of the Aspen Center for Physics is a new installation by Mimi Park with a unique lifespan. Principles of dissolution and return characterize Park’s art, which often takes the form of sprawling sculptural installations that integrate small readymades with natural substances like seeds, plants, and soil. Over the course of the exhibition, mechanized elements within the installation release energy powered by the sun, electricity, or batteries, resulting in unchoreographed movement. When the energy is depleted, the installation comes to rest in a temporary form. All elements of Park’s installation for AIR can be borrowed by visitors with the understanding that they will be returned when Park requests them for a future presentation. Park considers the ways in which matter circulates through the world in random patterns of proximity, with endless permutations. These fragile unions of objects illuminate new understandings of caretaking, value, and responsibility. 

Mimi Park is a South Korean interdisciplinary artist known for site-specific installations of kinetic sculptures. Park, who is interested in the relation between the duration of a life and the duration of a lifeform’s total decomposition, takes inspiration from cyclical patterns such as microcosms and soft circuitry to build diminutive, fantastical worlds in perpetual states of construction and decomposition. Dawning: dust, seeds, Coplees, her recent exhibition at Lubov, New York (2022), featured seedlings of radish sprouts, zoomorphic sculptures arranged quasi-taxonomically, and “Copless,” small mechanized devices that flutter and crawl in response to diverse stimuli. Her Coplees reappeared in Murmuring in Blue Kaleidoscope (2022), an impromptu concerto at Swiss Institute, New York, fueled by hybridized solar energy and the movement of the audience. Park’s live, functional systems challenge efficiency and systematization, instead seeking to probe the points where language and symbols short-circuit and lead to new forms of interconnectivity. Park’s work was included in the 15th Gwangju Biennale, and has been featured in recent solo and group exhibitions at Sebastian Gladstone, Los Angeles (2024); Hessel Museum, New York (2023); and Smack Mellon, New York (2023).

Melody from Stomach is curated by Daniel Merritt, Chief Curator.

Melody from Stomach is commissioned by Aspen Art Museum and co-presented by the Aspen Center for Physics. 

Image: Mimi Park, installation view from the 15th Gwangju Biennale, PANSORI: A Soundscape of the 21st Century, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.