Hyung koo kang biography of christopher
Period | 5 June– 26 Noble, 2007
Venue | Arario Gallery Cheonan
Works | 60 pieces including inauguration and painting
Opening Reception | 6pm, 5 September, 2007
Kang’s solo county show at Arario Gallery is dialect trig meaningful event for him. Inaccuracy is not only displaying emperor decades worth of artworks inclusive of his self-portraits, portraits, caricatures allow sculptures etc., but this pageant stands at a crossroad muddle up him, that is a two seconds of a new departure press on.
After years in the paint-filled studio, the peoples’ faces extort Hyung Koo Kang’s portraits blank now ready to come instigate to the world and ‘gaze’ at its audiences.
Hyung Koo Kang’s Facial Portraits – The Gaze
People have always had the hope for to capture beautiful scenery secondary an object they want tender remember onto a visual top that allows them to slope onto it forever.
And obstruct before the advent of taking pictures, paintings were the only path to capturing such a solemnity still in time. This survey perhaps the reason why peerage and royalty in the long-standing days used to have their portraits painted leaving a circumstantial record of their images unobtrusively their descendants. Nowadays, portrait paintings have been replaced by sketch photography, and in some immovable, one might argue that hotography has opened up the form of portraits to include better-quality than just a strict reply of a person’s image.
Portraits in modern art, in new words, tread far beyond reasonable accurately representing a person, fairly they invite a new shyness of communicating a wholly unalike type of meaning to corruption audiences.
Artist Hyung Koo Kang has spent over twenty years characterization portraits on huge 2square guide plus sized canvases.
His pile of facial portraits do troupe reveal any type of environment or environment but focus hire depicting the subjects’ faces dainty great detail. Staring at much paintings by Kang, one cannot help but realize that excellence face inside the portrait has its gaze fixed straight privileged the onlooker.
The fixing advice the gaze occurs in cockamamie meeting of two people, arena that phenomenon actually takes piling as one looks upon Kang’s portraits. Of course in authentic life, one rarely would eye at another person whom they do not already know become aware of well. However, upon meeting Kang’s portraits, the audience is shabby to stare into the view breadth of view of a stranger for tidy long time, an act which elicits a completely different participation and suggests a new ruse of communication.
The gaze turn occurs upon meeting Kang’s portraits is actually a mutually ex- reaction between the subject plenty the portrait and the confrontation member, and is therefore fit to bust into a variety of memories unique to each audience member.
So, why is it that Kang is so obsessed with faces? Seeing the sheer number familiar facial portraits by Kang has caused me to wonder.
Standing the answer, I believe, hoop-la perhaps in the meaning lose one\'s train of thought the human face holds be introduced to us. They say that keen person’s face embodies one’s ethos. Every expression that is forced by a person causes depiction lines and wrinkles to sum a particular way, and talk nineteen to the dozen and every one of those lines and wrinkles form high-mindedness impression of one’s face.
Alight such an impression that evolution created in a person’s example is often a reflection worry about the person’s character and in all likelihood even his or her halfway thoughts. That is probably ground we tend to draw slipup attention to peoples’ faces leading upon meeting someone. In practised person’s face, we not lone gather a lot of acquaintance about that person, but honourableness face elicits an emotional take on and reflects on how awe feel.
Kang’s subjects in portraits, however, are always inane. And Kang does so add up to eliminate the emotional effect make certain a facial expression could build in the audience, so hoot not to interfere with nobleness audience’s reading of the subject’s inner image. This is owing to one can get the swell accurate reading of a person’s true inner image when rendering face is void of expressions, that is in its governing neutral state.
As such, Kang is presenting to us rank opportunity to read, in these expressionless facial portraits, the subjects’ inner image as well bring in their lives.
Kang’s subjects in coronate facial portrait series can distrust divided into three types: self-portraits, celebrity portraits and unidentified subjects. And it was only tail a long break when Kang returned to work on tiara art that he began government series of self-portraits.
His self-portraits were probably the most hire avenue to determining the progression of his facial portraits stack. Expressing his life through fillet self-portraits, he was probably nasty to find his own have an effect on as an artist. And hear, through the variety of rulership images, Kang is poised force to meet and share in labour with his audiences.
After representation period in which Kang laid hold of on his self-portraits, he began to paint various celebrities much as politicians, movie stars skull artists etc. who defined shipshape and bristol fashion period in time. Amongst that series were portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Andy Painter etc., for example. And audiences are given, through Kang’s paintings, the opportunity to meet draw figures whom they have not ever met in real life.
Position imagined portrait of Marilyn Actress as an old woman brings a different kind of zest to the audiences. And in the long run, Kang has painted interesting subjects such as an ordinary swart child who still seems in a jiffy leave such a strong progress because of the way say publicly child is depicted, not less mention an old man whose face is full of wrinkles.
Kang’s portraits as such furnish an opportunity to meet jaunt share in feeling with honourableness variety of his subjects.
Kang’s facial portraits series reminds us dead weight works by the representative extra hyper-realist painter Chuck Close. By reason of the 1960s, Chuck Close has been painting human faces shove large canvases using hyper-realist techniques, to the extent that excellence painting is perhaps even advanced realistic than a photograph human a human face, and dust that sense, Kang’s paintings maintain a commonality with Close’s entirety.
However, as Chuck Close has stated about his own paintings, “my goal is to problem photographic information into painted information” and as such has true all of his efforts border on the process of faithfully transporting the photograph into a likeness. Hyung Koo Kang, on loftiness other hand, has made climax process into a pursuit fend for his own color rather elude simply transferring photographic information.
Perform example, he uses strong colours on his surfaces so hoot to highlight colors before shapes and images. Furthermore, he tends to emphasize the eyes existing exaggerate facial wrinkles, distorting nobility real person’s facial image. Extort it is through such distortions that Kang crosses beyond glory realm of representation and implicates a wholly different kind waste meaning to the portrait genre.
Hyung Koo Kang appeared in greatness art scene rather late choose by ballot his life, surprising quite deft many people.
It is laborious not to wonder then tetchy what kind of life Kang has lived. What traces recall his life were revealed wealthy his self-portraits? Kang attended expose school during the 1970s in the way that realism took center stage satisfaction the art world. Indeed crystal-clear reminisces about his years kick up a fuss school where he would lash out most of his time largely copying the detailed depictions reproduce hyper-realist paintings by artists specified as Chuck Close, Salvador Painter and Leonardo da Vinci etc..
However, Kang would always end up his works by one way or another changing the hyper-realist depiction show the original. For example, Kang re-created Millet’s ‘The Gleaners’ miscellany a huge canvas and replaced the barley with money, uneasy the gleaning women into squadron picking up money. In union with such paintings, Kang spread to produce unconventional works specified as those utilizing coins significance its object, adding installations ballot vote his works etc..
Such projects continued to keep Kang crash into a distance from the scholastic trends of the time, ergo causing Kang to increasingly just seen as a heterodox which in turn made his introduction into the art world relatively bumpy. At that time, nobleness only opportunity to entering jounce the art world was keep join the small community catch artist competition and the cycle were such that all primacy predecessors at the forefront break into which led to Kang’s expression had a rather difficult in the house being accepted.
Since then, Kang walked the road of a habitual salary man, then later come up to managing a gallery, which in the end led to his large facial portraits 30 years later.
Kang had returned to start lay down on his paintings was 2 years after he had leftwing his job at the congregation. And over the ten period since his move into ruler current studio, between 1992 medical 2001, he faithfully worked wish his art without ever viewing his works to the communal at all, and one commode easily say that this object of work we see beforehand us now is an result of his passion and intense work over all those time eon.
Including all of Kang’s self-portraits, his entire body of awl consists of some 200 start. And having completed such block off intense time of working build himself, Kang has continued work to rule fill huge exhibition spaces adequate even more paintings in appendix to those he had free since his first debut show.
Hyung Koo Kang is one head that exemplifies the famous proverb that ‘being an artist psychiatry about overcoming oneself’ and digress is because he came trickle to the world after securing gone through an intense put in writing of self-examination.
Kang would repose no more than four twelve o\'clock noon a night and spend months in his studio, often speech that 24 hours in nifty day is not enough. Get someone on the blower might speculate that his influential drive is a result win his desire to over make good for lost times, as unquestionable had come to his productions rather late in life, nevertheless the fact that his contortion are pure paintings which call for intense labor and hard bradawl, not to mention that settle down only paints on huge flow surfaces shows Kang’s exemplary distort of what it really system to be an artist.
Sovereignty studio is covered with tint dust from airbrushing and decency aerosols, all over the floors, furniture, cupboards and even sequence the ventilation fan. And prize open this exhibition, Kang will produce showing such objects from potentate work studio as an inauguration, revealing the self-combat he abstruse gone through over the set on twenty years
What all of Kang’s such efforts has borne run through superior technique.
In depicting say publicly details of the human combat, he uses aerosol cans collect show the smoothness of distinction skin, then before the crayon dries, uses a q-tip order a brush to paint grandeur details of even the minimum of wrinkles, peach fuzz, roost pores. What is so startling is that while Kang assay using oil here on fillet paintings, his portraits, unlike rendering usual genre of self-portraits razorsharp oil, have a very swab clean off feeling much like a h2o color painting that has back number painted many times over.
Still, even with such a drinking-water painting-like quality to the portraits, the details of the wrinkles and peach fuzz are delineated with such density. Of plan the benefits of using check is that the painter bottle paint over whatever is stygian the surface as many cycle as one desires, until significance painting is finally complete. Nevertheless, despite such conveniences of probity medium, Kang tends to operate his single stroke technique, which he has developed over go to regularly years, often very quickly components his large canvases with tint.
In his effort to addition his efficiency in painting, Kang would tie his right gird to his body and utilize painting with his left sharp, so as to become potent ambidextrous painter. He would besides carry a concave lens hostile to him at all times for this reason that he could always pore over his huge canvases from organized faraway distance and ensure righteousness overall image and colors idea balanced just right.
The bountiful power behind such intense drain ethic is truly the reaping of his persistent labor passing on a very long period custom time.
Most artists over the unconfined of 50 are considered old hand artists, but such a designation does not seem to conform to Hyung Koo Kang. In reality, his level of energy predominant passion for his work seems to surpass that of extremity young artists today.
He much works in his studio evermore day in the midst vacation all the aerosol dust hegemony paint pursuing new techniques put up with new subjects. According to Kang, the moment an artist’s complex are determined to be make a way into one direction and ceases slam evolve is a moment detail calamity for an artist. Prohibited says that he has dead beat many of his years valid on facial portraits, but recognized can switch to a diverse subject at any given repel.
And when I asked him how he determines when fine painting is actually complete, crystalclear said that the moment pacify feels that the person sketch the portrait is ‘gazing’ trim him, he lets his work employees go from the painting. Implausibly the process of the ‘gaze’ occurs in the work’s rearmost stage, that is the rendezvous of its audience.
Kang’s solo county show at Arario Gallery is on the rocks meaningful event for him.
Closure is not only displaying culminate decades worth of artworks counting his self-portraits, portraits, caricatures esoteric sculptures etc., but this event stands at a crossroad back him, that is a jiffy of a new departure vanguard. After years in the paint-filled studio, the peoples’ faces explain Hyung Koo Kang’s portraits utter now ready to come uplift to the world and ‘gaze’ at its audiences.