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The Hole is pleased to announce Big Fat Summer, our first solo exhibition of new paintings by the Swedish artist Leo Park (b. 1980). Advancing the tradition of the nude in landscape, Park’s latest body of work is a postcard from the Scandinavian countryside, an invitation to indulge and a deliciously decadent exploration of desire.

A saturated palette places the paintings firmly in the bright sunshine of a hot summer day. The sun is directly overhead beaming tight shadows of mid afternoon onto rosy figures, almost certainly not wearing enough sunscreen, reminding us of the joys of June. In Madeleine ice cream melts, in Woman On The Grass a contemporary odalisque lounges on her phone and in The Lovers two bodies tangle nude in the grass. Each canvas is filled nearly edge-to-edge with fleshy bits and a maximalist joy that is reflected in the show’s title inviting the viewer to also indulge, to picnic in the park, to snooze in the sun, topless tan or have a summer fling.

Park begins each canvas according to the rules of classical composition before abandoning logic, letting figures take form from intuition. The contortion of Park’s figures and the placement of their tattoos offer pathways into and out of his compositions: he describes the intended effect as a kind of visual möbius strip. The jumbled limbs of Park’s entangled forms feel liberated, free from clothing, gravity and reality. Where a hand grasps a forearm or a toe touches a tit, the atmosphere is full of tenderness. Biological sex is articulated through an assortment of parts, though not often predictably: fingers and breasts might come in threes, a nipple is indistinguishable from a maraschino cherry, arms go boneless to encircle a lover.

Across the twelve paintings all the figures sport tattoos. Interested in the way a tattoo’s flatness can compress history, Park depicts the human body as a canvas capable of carrying a plethora of context: A forearm as a plane that can feature hieroglyphs, runes and cartoons with a unique proximity. He cites Jean Miró, Hilma af Klint, and the Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström as pioneers of this kind of multilayered, icon-infused painting.

Leo Park (b. 1980) works and lives in Stockholm. He holds an MFA from Konstfack University of Arts, Craft and Design. Park has his roots in both art history and pop culture, collecting motifs and stylistic influences from past to present. Since his solo debut at Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm 2021, he has participated in various international shows in Berlin, Cologne, London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Shanghai, Mexico City and Taipei. He has shown in art fairs such as the Armory Show, Market Art Fair and Zona Maco.

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