Mimi Park at Lubov – Artforum International
In H. G. Wells’s 1896 science-fiction novel The Island of Physician Moreau, a shipwrecked protagonist finds himself on the titular landmass, which is inhabited by the abominable creations of a mad scientist whose interspecies experiments are a haunting metaphor for man’s disregard and cruelty towards nature. South Korean artist Mimi Park’s exhibition right here, “Dawning: mud, seeds, Coplees,” takes on this theme, providing the viewer an expertise—concurrently amusing, bewildering, and horrifying—one may need if one have been ever stranded on the darkish shores of Physician Moreau’s laboratory.
Dwell seedlings in varied phases of development sprout from a pulpy Pangea-like landmass on the gallery’s flooring—a carpet of lush greenery with a meticulously crafted topography of rolling vistas, valleys, and basins. The inhabitants of this wondrous land embrace an array of automated bots, some as small as a matchbox, who dwell alongside bigger bots with humanoid options, harking back to Snow White’s dwarfs had they sprung from a cyberpunk noir written by Philip Okay. Dick. In an adjoining room, the constructing blocks of Park’s kingdom are categorically organized upon the ground into an exhaustive indexical show: Bits of string, copper wire, buttons, glass trinkets, baggage of glitter, laptop motherboards, and extra are laid out with surgical precision.
In the primary gallery, a single misguided step could outcome within the quick dying of a Coplee, one of many twelve fluttering droids that comprise Coplee Swarm, 2022. Every one isn’t any bigger than a monarch butterfly and normal from toothbrushes, pipe cleaners, and electrical motors. One other droid, Bristle Bot, 2022, trudges atop a pair of toilet-bowl scrubbers, its uncovered wiring surrounding a vibrating pool of water on its again. Watch lengthy sufficient and you may even see this poor creature erroneously bludgeon itself by repeatedly smashing right into a wall, its metallic screech begging onlookers to finish its crude existence. Wait even longer and this complete world of lush greenery will finally decay right into a pungent pile of compost and metallic scraps—however actually not in useless.
— Gabriel H. Sanchez
