Green (Yong Woon Park) is a South Korean artist based in London. After studying Fine Art and Environmental Design in South Korea, he worked for Chang-Jo Architecture as an Environmental Designer and funded his own Design Studio. Dissatisfied with corporate life and unable to ignore his drive to express himself through painting, he decided to move to London where he obtained in 2022 a MA Degree in Fine Art: Painting at Camberwell College of Arts UAL. Green is currently painting in his studio at the Bow Arts Lakeside Centre in London. In 2023 he was selected by Chila Burman to be part of the exhibition Bring your Light at the Nunnery Gallery. He also displayed his work at the Surging Silence exhibition at the Hypha Studios. In 2024 he was part of a trio-exhibition at the Four Corners in London called A Mighty Gust. Green is enthusiastic about politics, and expressing is critical opinion about dystopian societies.
Green is presenting to the world artworks that are expressions of an uncontrollable visceral need to voice his own intense criticism of societal issues such as competitiveness, inequality, and peer pressure. By looking at his paintings, the audience is invited to reflect upon the idiosyncrasies of contemporary societies, in the hope that they will be the conduits of positive change.
Dynamic large-scale paintings, working with unmixed oil paint on raw canvas are the centre of Green’s practice. His work is vividly colourful, often humorous and marked by a powerful, affective gestures. For the artist, the process of painting is one where emotion flows freely, it has directness to it that every day life lacks.
His subject matter weaves motifs from contemporary culture and politics, especially its guttural movements, with mythical elements, Korean traditional folklore, and the natural world. Green is concerned with the moral failings of contemporary life. His work is derived from his emotions and life in Korea, a competitive society where individuals must sometimes mould themselves to unattainable collective standards. Drifting through society, losing control of life, he felt overwhelmed by the speed and brutality of his own surroundings, and lived as a bystander and a follower throughout his life.
Afraid and anxious he wants to change and express himself fully. The canvas is his narrator where he expresses his emotions of guilt, anger, anxiety, and confusion. The use of vibrant colours sometimes applied straight from the tube, or via harsh brush strokes and painting knives, conceal his identity by creating a persona that is eventually revealed through peculiar narratives, rough gestures, and thick textures. The process of artmaking is a self-revelation and expression of the oppressed emotions he has within himself. This is visible in his artistic journey.