soft licking

Soft licking, the paired exhibition brings together Qinru Zhang 22 FAV and Soo Park 24 SC, two artists who approach femininity, play, and digital identity from complementary angles. Zhang, a NYC–based multimedia artist, uses 3D animation and digital painting to transform hyper-femininity. In soft licking, she presents candy-colored avatars and glitch-laced dreamscapes that push the “kawaii” aesthetic to its breaking point—exposing the mechanics of self-control. Park, a Seoul and Brooklyn–based sculptor and animation filmmaker, works at the intersection of childhood nostalgia and trauma glorification—with a sense of humor. In soft licking, Park introduces a cast of playmates: a playground performing a ritual game to bring back children who no longer return ; Bella Boo, an underground Kpop gyaru Idol based in New York, now hosting a fan meeting in the gallery.

And yet, within this burnout, embers glow. soft licking is a search for those embers—a messy, feverish search. We want to recharge Eros through excess, to find authenticity in the artificial, the sacred in the profane. These works are sticky with ambiguity: tongues-in-cheek (literally), sugar and salt, pleasure and abjection. We toy with the aesthetics of girlishness—kawaii symbols in seductive poses—until they start to glitch, warp, and leak truth. Digital goddesses with aching feet. Hello Kitty swigging battery acid. It’s poetic and perverse, a bubblegum banquet on the edge of a breakdown.

The exhibition will take place at the Millennium Film Workshop, 167 Wilson Ave in Brooklyn, NY, from July 4 to July 24. The opening reception will begin at 6:00 PM on July 4. Bella Boo, an animated idol character created by Soo Park, will hold her fan meeting at the location at 7:30PM.