In the industrial backdrop of Ridgewood, Brooklyn, Anna Park’s studio is less of a clean white cube and more of a high-pressure lab. At just 29, Park has moved at breakneck pace through the art world. She went from being a star student to a global name whose work now sits in major collections like the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Born in Daegu, South Korea, and raised in Utah, Park spent her childhood constantly adjusting to new environments. That experience of being a first-generation immigrant in the American suburbs gave her exclusive POV to the social “performances” people do just to fit in—a theme that’s embedded in her unruly, charcoal creations.
After a stint in California, she landed at the New York Academy of Art, where she was discovered by KAWS during an open studio in 2019. That moment helped boost her career, leading to a chain of sold-out shows and a reputation for massive, soot-stained drawings that captured the messy, sensory overload of a night out in New York. Since then, her work has evolved from chaotic crowd scenes into something much more psychological and inward, though she’s never lost that familiar sense of rapid motion visually.
Her latest solo show, Hot Honey, which opened on April 30 at Lehmann Maupin in London, is a big page-turner for her career. For the first time, Park is breaking her own “no-color” rule, moving away from the monochromatic compositions that she’s ubiquitously known for and leaning into searing, intentional hues. She’s now working with aluminum panels and 3D-printed sculptural elements, using a palette inspired by the glow of fluorescent lights and the charm of vintage theater posters.
One of the core themes of Hot Honey is the “code-switching” humans do to survive in social situations. Park digs into her childhood love of Sunday comic strips and old Hollywood ads to pull out two specific archetypes: the dark vixen and the blond bombshell. They are an homage to the pair of contrasting female subjects that she associates with the past, but maintain relevance through mainstream cultural tropes. She uses these subjects to probe the gap between who we are in public and who we are behind closed doors. Plus, you’ll also notice text creeping into the work for the first time with phrases like “Let’s Pretend” that are embedded directly into the compositions. The texts reinforce these themes in subtle ways.
Step inside her studio and you’ll find it’s become a bit of a carnival, filled with paper-maché textures and a growing collection of vintage puppets. Park is the first to admit she has some “kooky” side hobbies, like hunting down porcelain puppets on Facebook Marketplace, but it all feeds the work. By mixing iPad sketches with raw, intuitive physical drawing, she’s finding a middle ground between high-tech construction and a total “purge” of ideas.
Park is proving that even with this new chapter of color and a 3D printer, the essence of her work is still about the human struggle of finding out where we belong. As part of our Visits series, we sat down with the Brooklyn-based artist as she discusses her comic-inspired works and breaking her “no-color” rule amid her solo debut at Lehmann Maupin London that is on view through May 30th.
