The first thing a viewer notices about Park Eun Sun’s “Sfere-Cubo” is its slick ambition. Standing more than six feet tall and nearly as wide and deep, the piece commands attention in the center of Art of the World Gallery, the newest work within a body of sculptures that are all new to the Americas.

Park, a South Korean, has lived in Pietrasanta, Italy nearly 30 years. (Sculptors of stone, including Michelangelo, have gravitated to that Tuscan town since the Roman era to be near the quarries of Carrara, the source of the most pristine white marble.) He is best known for monumental public sculptures that are often columnar, such as the 16-ton piece of red and black granite that stands sentry outside the gallery.

“Sfere-Cubo” could be a new direction or an outlier. At first glance, a visitor might think it’s an elaborate rack for dozens of museum-quality bocce balls or the 3D logo of, say, a tech company. The spheres each contain two colors of marble that have been fused and polished: Green spheres with white bands and white spheres with green bands. The bands are as narrow as pinstripes, which looks like an achievement in itself. Each sphere sits atop a stainless steel rod, and from a distance, the shape of the piece reveals itself as a cube.

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Whether he is designing spheres, cubes, columns or some combination of all those things, Park almost always employs the two-tone technique as a symbol of dualities of order and disorder in human nature.

The shapes also have meaning to him. Sometime before he made “Sfere-Cubo,” Park told an interviewer that his spheres represent genuineness and purity, while his cubes are about bounded, rigid space. “The sphere reminds me of childhood, while the cube corresponds to the formed individual, rigid and uncompromising in his positions. Only by remembering that you have been a child can you find a balance,” he said.

Everything about “Sfere-Cubo” speaks of perfection, setting it apart from other works on view that contain the artist’s signature crack — an assault on the material he considers essential, because it forces him to work with unpredictability as he shapes a piece. “The split should not be read as a wound, but rather as a regenerative act that allows the most hidden part of the material to emerge,” he has said. “The splits are for me thoughts, neuroses, fears, anger. In whatever way we can identify them, they appear as a concrete sign of vitality.”

Whatever direction it takes, Park’s career is about to get another boost. South Korea is in the midst of a museum-building boom that almost defies description. The website Artnet reported in June that the country aims to open 186 new museums by 2023. And one — the Infinite Museum Park Eun Sun, in Park’s native Sinan County — will feature his work. The Italian architect Mario Botta, who is no stranger to spheres and cubes, will design it.

So perhaps “Sfere-Cubo” is a conceptual model?

“Park Eun Sun: From the Italian Quarries” is on view through Oct. 5 at Art of the World Gallery, 2201 Westheimer; 713-526-1201, artoftheworldgallery.com.

molly.glentzer@chron.com

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