Life accumulates and transforms into abstraction Shim Sangyong (Director of Seoul National University Museum of Art, Ph.D. in Art History) ​ "Appearance is intimately linked to existence. Only suffering can separate existence from appearance."  - Simone Weil, from "Gravity and Grace" [1]       The Moment of God Kang Un has been painting clouds for a long time. His clouds are always beautiful, whether it be cumulus clouds, clouds after a rain shower, or feathery clouds stretching high in the autumn sky, it can be confidently said that there has never been an artist who pa

Blue: A Seeker’s Journey Toward Glimpsing the Essence and Resting the Soul Choi Jeong-ju (Former director, Jeju Museum of Art) “Blue” was always thus. Before human beings began producing neat and clean colors, it was a source of the most wondrous light, an origin of life that understood our human wishes and prayers. To the foolish people of that callow era who readily believed the world would always be as shining as the morning, blue often opened the doors of time and space toward reflection. Even when the mercilessness of life left human beings reeling, even as it left

Exhibition Review Park Young-Ran (Head of Collection and Archive Department, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea) A Walk Through Mind: Destiny and the Natal Four Pillars, 34.8x34.8cm, Oil on Canvas, 2021 To humans living in reality, the sky is a symbol of their ideals and longing. Nature is given to everyone to be seen impartially amid joy and sorrow as well as hardship and adversity brought on by life. This nature is also an object onto which an infinite ideal is projected. So are the clouds freely floating in the sky. It was since his early 1990s work

There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. - Lee Myung-Ok (director, Savina Museum of Contemporary Art) Hwang Sa-young held out his cup in hand courteously, toward Jeong Yak-hyeon, who was pouring makgeolli. Jeong glanced at Hwang’s right hand, which was wrapped in a silk cloth, and smiled.  “This is the hand that the king touched with his own, so I’ve heard.” Jeong’s tone was dry. Hwang, with a reddened face, covered his right hand with his left. Jeong Yak-hyeon again spoke. “Why do you cover it? It makes the hand more stand out.”  Hwang stut

Saunter through the mind of thousand paintings Article by Jun Seungbo, Images courtesy of the artist                       , Installation view of the 4th Prague Biennale, Expanded Paintings, 2009 Kang Un has painted more than 170 works in the past 2 years, between his TheSound of Wind and Traces series and A Walk Through Mind series. Every paintingin the two series was done on a size 100 (toile de 100) canvas. Every painting issmeared with layers upon layers of paint. The layers not only embody the matièreof the paint but also the countless iterations of application and

Journey of Seeking Truth: From Contemplation to Healing  Paek Chong-Ok, Director of the Art Ecology Institute  Kang Un’s style of art has changed. Nowadays, the artist is immersed in drawing abstract paintings, noticeably using different hues, rough brushstrokes, faint letters, and thick matière. If people, who used to know him as the artist of clouds, see these paintings, they will find them very unfamiliar, raising such questions as: “Why does he work on completely different paintings instead of his famous cloud series?” or “Has he gone through some significant changes

Kang Un’s Exhibition: The Sound of Wind and Traces  By Lee Byung-Hee, an Art Critic In 2019, Kang Un showcased his new series of paintings, through the exhibitions titled Wound, Healing and The Sound of Wind and Traces, respectively held in the Shinsegae Gallery and in the Artspace 3. Wire fences, journals, the sound of wind, the lines of the palm, and fragmentary thoughts are a few keywords to describe his new works. In the early 2019, the artist visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where he recalled his experience of having served in a General Outpost (GOP). He

Kang Un - Painting As Psychological Scar Reflected on Nature and Treatment Lee Yeong-jun (Curator) "When you're feeling down, and are unable to see ahead, look up at your sky, which seems to be staring back at you, as if you were the sky." From "Look up at Your Sky," a poem by Park No-hae Introduction Nature is one of the most important subject matters of art. It was after the seventeenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, when landscapes began to be treated as an independent subject matter rather than just as a background in the history of art. Landscape painting was es

“Disappearance – A Report on Lingering Imagery,”  Art of the Month, Joongang Ilbo,  April 30, 2016 To enjoy something lingering is to enjoy something disappearing. Something that is lingering is “something that remains feebly alive.” As extinction turns into nothingness, we are usually reminded of something negative. However, we do not need to hold such a negative view because extinction leaves behind lingering imagery. Every now and then we are deeply touched by it and become excited. It also brings us a sense of longing. We enjoy art so as to relish such lingering imag

Play : Pray – The relationship between the poetic imagery and mental imagery Byun Jong Pil ( Art Critic and Director, Yangju City Chang Ucchin Museum of Art ) In Drawing a Stroke on the Water, I tried to go into the intuitive essence of art, ‘play,’ through expressing infinity by one brushstroke like a play with water and paper. Also, in Air and Dream, I tried to ‘pray’ as this work involves prayer and the meditational practice of layering small and subtle-colored traditional handmade paper. I intended to take out the burden of daily life and embrace nature. - Artist Sta

Linguistic Landscape Held in an Infinite World  Kim Hee-rang (Curator of Gwangju Museum of Art) Kang Un has for the last 20 years unfolded a world of contemplation beyond the visible world through representations of natural phenomena encapsulating the cyclical order of nature, such as the sky, wind, and water, and the law of creation and extinction. In the serial work Drawing on the Water , with which he has experimented for several years, he has tried to extend his art to a limitless world in a way of presenting invisible natural phenomena rather than relying on represe

Some Thoughts on Kang Un’s Art Yun Chaegab (Independent Curator)   Artist Kagn Un typically belongs to the so-called ‘Gwangju biennale generation.’ It is so in the sense that he could not only recognize Seoul as equally as other localities in Korea while he himself was living and working in Gwangju, but also be well informed of international art trends and meet in person many contemporary international artists while working in the province. This is a cultural environment strikingly different from that of the previous generations of artists and, in this respect, his gener

Have you ever felt nostalgia for nature?: A poetic portrayal of an artist’s intellectual contemplation, embodied in the forms of clouds By Shin Hang-seop, an Art Critic August 13, 1998 | Appears in the Volume 285, 1998 edition of Newsmaker     Nature is the best teacher in the world. It is because nature can be considered as a prototype of every existence in the world. Particularly, in plastic art, which deals with natural forms, nature becomes the most exemplary source of artistic expressions, inspiring plastic artists to develop a language of expression and its own gra

Kang Un: “From Eternity to Here?”  Kim Hong-hee The 10th solo exhibition of Kang Un presents his recent works produced from Ip-chun(first day of spring) to So-man(beginning of summer) of the year 2005. Throughout the variety of media and methods applied to the works, from oil painting, relief, collage, installation, photography to video, the artistic approach characteristic of Kang Un is consistently immanent in terms of subject matter and aesthetics of work.  With a naturalistic sensibility, the artist takes subject matters from nature, especially from humble elements o

Invisible Boundary : Metamorphosed Asian Art TANI Arata (Gwangju Biennale 2000 Commissioner) Kang Un is an artist who was born in Kwangju. He is still young in his thirties. The ive huge paintings were remarkably attractive among the stimulating works in he Korea Oceania section, which was organized by one of the commissioners, Kim Honghee. His painting has no reference to the Korea tradition or mentality, but shows an impressive tension in its representation. We can see a new painting styke of the Korean young generation in his artwork. What the focuses upon and choose

Have you ever felt nostalgia for nature?: A poetic portrayal of an artist’s intellectual contemplation, embodied in the forms of clouds By Shin Hang-seop, an Art Critic August 13, 1998 | Appears in the Volume 285, 1998 edition of Newsmaker Nature is the best teacher in the world. It is because nature can be considered as a prototype of every existence in the world. Particularly, in plastic art, which deals with natural forms, nature becomes the most exemplary source of artistic expressions, inspiring plastic artists to develop a language of expression and its own grammar

Poetic Paintings Resonant with Soulful Spirit _ Rhee Won-il (Curator) In the dusk of evening, with the sky turning dark gray, I visited Kang Un’s studio, located in the middle of a rice field in northeastern Hwasun County. There I could get an overview of a collection of his paintings that had been created for his solo exhibitions. It seemed that his artistic output emerged from the long tunnel of pain, as if a creature broke out of the chrysalis. The mountains portrayed in his paintings, which he called the mountains of spirit, looked lucid but deep, at the same time, d

The Reality in Empty Space - By Art Critic Suk Won Chang    I have never once asked why the skies are skies and clouds are clouds. They are just what they are. Since Kang moved his studio to Haenam, he has come up with themes of skies and clouds covering most of the canvas and of silhouette of hills with pine trees. Didn＇t he have anything better than these to draw? However, come to think of it, he must have started on a new journey towards something more permanent and aloof with fresh perspectives to the nature, away from the socially conscious and contemporary works to