Ultimately, Myth Mirrors Its Time

Before written history, the birth of a nation was often mythologized through stories that carried the desires, hopes, and survival instincts of the era. And within these myths, transformation is always present. In essence, for a new polity to emerge, something of the old had to shift. The newly formed state then needed a narrative that could encourage its people and affirm their will to live well.

Unlike the cosmological myths of Greco-Roman tradition—where the creation of the world is grounded in a philosophical framework—the myths surrounding the origins of nations tend to reflect the lived realities of their time. Heroes who dominated an era became deified; their stories circulated orally, gradually enriched and embellished before eventually taking written form. Through this process, myth inevitably became a hybrid of bravado, imagination, and collective longing—a kind of narrative fiction shaped by the desires of its age.

Origin myths also share a familiar narrative structure. Something new emerges mysteriously; that new being endures hardship; it eventually gains the strength to overcome its trials and rises as a hero—sometimes even the founding leader of a nation. This pattern, used historically to persuade and bind people together, remains surprisingly intact even today. Just look at contemporary politics.

Park Jung Hyuk’s paintings contemplate the long-standing presences that have persisted from antiquity to now, and our relationship to them. His work may very well be sketching the myths of our own era—stories that future generations might one day define and reinterpret as “the myths of the early 21st century.”

History is a tool we use to measure the present. Myth, however, predates history; it occupies a vague, immense timescale where humanity, despite being bound by simpler social structures, sought ways to organize itself, to form communities, and to establish the minimum set of agreements needed to live together. Recognizing this reveals a certain poignancy: a sense of the urgency and perseverance with which human beings have endured alongside the Earth for an unfathomable span of time.

With this in mind—and as a way to expand painting’s possibilities—the artist chose aluminum foil instead of canvas to depict his mythic scenes. The material’s peculiar qualities create fragmentary, heightened moments and allow him to build a mercurial mythic space of his own. By relocating a weighty theme onto a light, shimmering surface, he presents a realm reminiscent of dreams—otherworldly, flickering, unstable, much like our own drifting memories.

Yet it is precisely through these wavering, air-like forms on foil that a new question arises: “What is the myth of this moment we are living in?” Following that question, the work returns to traditional painting, grounding itself once more in material presence. Through this shift, the emotional, rational, and perceptual capacities of human experience take on new clarity and narrative depth.

In the artist’s paintings—foil works included—Park’s mythology is built through elemental forces: fire, water, waves, sky, and violence. These primal substances, and the human impulses that have sought to overcome them since ancient times, are boldly staged. The evolution of eras has always depended on a dialectical and often violent engine of negation and renewal. To usher in the new, the old must be dismantled. This negation, however it manifests, bears the quality of violence. And yet, if such rupture arises from a collective desire to live better in the present, perhaps it is not violence per se but a fundamental human drive—just as myth has always suggested.

Park’s mythology requires a contemporary lens. Here, “eternity,” the primordial origin of human imagination, is continuously surpassed by cycles of life. Traditional myth elevates humans to divine beings and avoids the subject of death altogether. But in Park’s work, each pictorial element interlocks organically, softening the boundary between life and death until it becomes supple—almost gelatinous. Death becomes birth, birth becomes death, in an unbroken loop. This is his mythic message.

Following these stories across the canvases, one encounters the enduring forces that shape eras: transformation, collision, and recurrence. Threaded through these modern myths are the real stories of our own time—struggles, frictions, dances, reconciliations. History moves forward through tension and harmony, just as myth always has.

References

• 《신화, 시대의 재현 (Myth, Representation of the Era)》