Sayart.net - Honggoo Kang′s Solo Exhibition Cloud, Sea, Island Opens in Seoul

From September 1 to October 13, 2024, ONE AND J. Gallery will host Honggoo Kang’s solo exhibition Cloud, Sea, Island, featuring new works that delve into the landscapes and memories of his hometown, Shinan County, focusing on clouds and seas.

Honggoo Kang, born in 1956, is a pioneer in Korean digital photography. Since the early 1990s, he has utilized digital image manipulation to capture the realities of Korean society. In the 2000s, his work shifted to documenting the changing cityscapes under capitalism, focusing on areas demolished for redevelopment and the lives of the residents affected. By blending photography with painting, collage, and montage, the artist creates images that blur the line between reality and digital fabrication, using these techniques to metaphorically express the complex and contradictory realities of Korean society.

The exhibition showcases works inspired by the artist's experiences over the past 17 years, documenting the islands and seas of Shinan County. Although Kang was born and raised in Shinan, the place felt strangely unfamiliar when he returned after 20 years. This sense of “familiar unfamiliarity” has become a significant theme in his work. Previous exhibitions, such as The Sea of Shinan — Mud, Sand and Wind at ONE AND J. Gallery in 2022 and Uninhabited Island & Inhabited Island — The Sea of Shinan II at Savina Museum in 2023, also explored this theme in depth.

Cloud, Sea, Island marks the first time Kang's paintings of clouds and seas from Shinan are being presented. The exhibition also introduces playful and whimsical works that feature objects like laundry, pencils, canvases, and torches painted over photographs of uninhabited islands. Kang describes these paintings as “works that a boy born on an island, growing up with the sea, could not help but paint before getting any older.” The landscapes of Shinan, which have profoundly shaped Kang’s past, present, and future, continue to influence his work, and this exhibition serves as a platform to share this deeply ingrained inspiration with the public.

In his new paintings of Shinan's seas and clouds, such as April Sea (2024), Evening Sea 1–4 (2024), Deep Sea (2024), and Overcast Sea 1-3 (2024), Kang distills the various moods, colors, and temperatures of the ocean into abstract forms. The clouds, whether nimbus, cumulus, or cumulonimbus, are rendered with distinct clarity, yet the paint is allowed to bleed and blend on the fabric, creating a natural feel.

These works are positioned between the abstract and the figurative, giving the impression that they have “drawn themselves.” However, this is far from the case; the paintings are the result of a repeated process of erasure and reapplication, capturing the artist's meticulous approach.

The Uninhabited Island (2022–) series, positioned like an island between the sea and cloud paintings, features acrylic paintings over digital photographs, a technique that naturally emerged while Kang reviewed his photos of Shinan. This series of over 30 works captures the fantastical memories he dreamed up as a child while gazing at uninhabited islands, as well as the realities he learned and experienced as an adult.

Honggoo Kang studied at Mokpo Teacher’s College and received his BFA and MFA from Hongik University. His works have been exhibited at the Seoul Museum of Art (2024), Savina Museum (2023), Nam-Seoul Museum of Art (2022), and others. His works are also part of the collections at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, and Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, among others. Kang served as the director of the Goeun Museum of Photography in Busan from 2018 to 2019.

Sayart / Jason Yim, yimjongho1969@gmail.com