A camera lens captures and transmits the image of an object, projecting it onto film. This primary function is something we’re all generally familiar with. Yet in the process, the lens also performs a sly trick: it flips the object upside down. This inversion, known as “Resupination”, originally comes from botany, where it describes an organ positioned opposite to its natural orientation. Much like a lens that insists on imposing a toll by asserting its own presence as it looks out at the world, Park Jung Hyuk’s way of seeing does not simply let reality pass through as-is. Instead, it reflects a bold intention to turn the world over through his own perspective.
 
The strategy of “Malocclusion” that Park presented in his first solo exhibition remains just as relevant here. In dentistry, malocclusion refers to a misalignment in which the upper and lower teeth fail to meet properly. But embedded in this term is a habitual value system—one that labels certain dental arrangements as ‘normal’ while deeming others ‘abnormal,’ despite the shaky objectivity of such classifications. In other words, the problematic structure lies in these arbitrary divisions and the stereotypes that sustain them.

At the same time, the idea that correcting malocclusion is inherently a “treatment” raises a sharp critique of society’s disciplinary mindset. As hinted in his earlier video documenting the training of a dog, we continually encounter, reshape, and are reshaped by the things around us—whether consciously or not. In an era when mechanisms of control over individuals grow ever more intricate, we may indeed find ourselves losing direction, passively retracing paths laid down by others.

Park Jung Hyuk contends that the point at which control is most fundamentally exerted is, somewhat unexpectedly, the family. He does not reject the institution of the family itself. Rather, he seeks to uncover the socially ingrained logic that hides under the seemingly benign guise of “family” and to invert it. For him, the family is not simply a space for confining unconscious desires and reducing them into the narrow bounds of familial romance. His true concern extends beyond the private sphere of the family to the social issues that intersect with it, examining the discourses that emerge in and around family structures.
 
Of course, for all of us, the family is the home into which we are born, where we are nurtured, and where we take our first steps into socialization. Yet under the inexorable authority of familial ethics, we internalize society’s order with surprising subtlety. The desires imposed on children by parents are, in effect, society’s desires imposed upon the individual; these desires obstruct and suppress the flow of personal individuality, channeling it along the single direction dictated by society—turning it into both a conduit and a code.
 
The single-channel video 3 minutes 33 seconds, subtitled family, depicts the process of assembling a thousand puzzle pieces. Unlike conventional puzzles, where pieces share uniform shapes, the pieces in this work are each uniquely shaped, making the path to a solution far from straightforward. Paradoxically, the final completed image reads, “It’s easy,” yet simultaneously seems to reveal the intricate dynamics within the family. The allure of the puzzle lies partly in the sense of achievement that comes from finding the right place for each piece according to fixed rules, and partly in the competitive drive to complete it faster than others, asserting one’s superiority.

Yet the puzzle’s process is confined within pre-established rules; it is ultimately a test of one’s own learned abilities, producing a mix of exhilaration and frustration. Moreover, the temporality of the video process—where time can be artificially controlled—intersects with the temporal logic of the puzzle, creating a convergence of different notions of time. Through this, Park challenges and disrupts the rules embedded within the puzzle, questioning the very structures that govern both play and representation.

166cm directly reflects Park Jung Hyuk’s own family history. The work was inspired by his grandmother, who had been bedridden a year prior, and the birth of his niece. The grandmother utters only a simple “uh,” yet Park calculates the intensity of her sound and uses an air compressor to raise a monitor accordingly. When the sound reaches its peak, the monitor ascends to exactly 166 cm—the artist’s eye level. This encounter becomes a fated ritual, reaffirming the sacred familial duty of a child toward their grandparent.

Although the grandmother is cared for and managed through mechanical means, her small gestures still signal that she endures. Even as the generational cycle of life and death—the grand continuum of existence—dominates our lives, the human desire to resist the deterministic codes of fate remains, a final assertion of our autonomous will.

The piece 15 Seconds, composed of white balloons and sound, originates from a dream the artist once experienced—a dream in which every family member appeared only to vanish one by one. The subtle mix of responsibility, unease, and comfort felt toward them produced a complex emotional undercurrent. As an expression of the unconscious shared only by living beings, the dream becomes a metaphor for an innate desire to break through norms and systems, mirrored by the balloon’s upward movement.
 
Though the balloon inevitably hits the ceiling and drops back down within a brief cycle of fifteen seconds, its ascent never truly stops. This freedom from codification belongs uniquely to the living, and it stands as the ultimate pursuit within Park Jung Hyuk’s practice. The heavy thud of the balloon echoing through the exhibition space might well be the heartbeat awakening our latent strength.