The Ninth Solo Exhibition
Minseok Kang's ninth solo exhibition, Endless force : explosion, opens at DOT MUSEUM in Busan. It takes both the first and second galleries, with thirty-four works in painting and three dimensions. Busan Metropolitan City and the Busan Cultural Foundation support the exhibition.
Kang is an artist who has long worked with the subject of the running car. The explosion of this exhibition holds the story of waking a deep interior pressed down by the dark forces of reality, and breaking through.
From The Source of Power to Endless Force
Kang's exhibition titles run on from one another. Beginning with The Source of Power, passing through Invisible Force, they arrive at Endless Force. The three are names of separate exhibitions and, at the same time, one story of finding an identity through the running car.
On the gallery wall the artist's note for this exhibition is set in Korean and English side by side. Beginning "Suppressed heart, dulling breath, and sharp, cold air weigh a beast down," it likens the passage from a halted state back to ignition to the breathing of a beast. The visit begins with this text and continues into the first gallery.
Thread — Straight Lines Added to the Surface
What the artist held onto for two years is inner force. To carry that force onto the canvas, Kang chooses embroidery thread. The straight line a thread makes adds to the flat work a sharpness no brush can produce.
Countless lines gather to dismantle the form of the car and stage a breakthrough outward from the vanishing point. The artist's note writes that scene: "Wind dismantles the space with threads and straight lines, and sharp light brushes past to leave the trace of time."
Butterfly — Perspective for the First Time
The title of this body of work is Butterfly. Two canvases of 162.2 × 130.3 cm hang side by side and form a single butterfly. The work begins from chaos theory — the flap of a butterfly's wings could cause a typhoon on the other side of the earth — and the speed and force pouring out of the perspective make the shape of that flapping. For the artist it means another beginning.
This is the first time Kang uses perspective in the work. Perspective is not used to set the form clearly, but to dismantle and erase the shape of the car. The process of changing and evolving stays on the surface as it is.
Sway in the Wind — A Racer in the Forest
The second gallery belongs to the sub-theme, Sway in the Wind. A racer is driving through a long forest. The gentle wind and the scent of the woods become a shelter for a moment, but deep in the forest a strong wind rises and the woods darken quickly.
Confused, the racer searches for the exit from a forest tangled like a maze. Blades of grass shake in the sharp wind, and at the moment fear and hope intersect the racer catches his breath in the middle of the forest. If the explosion is force bursting outward, this is time settling inward.
PROJECT NO.6 — Two Hundred Pieces Aloft
In the same second gallery sits the artist's own art project. More than two hundred pieces of woodrock hang in the air across a volume of 3 × 3 × 1.9 m. It carries the pulling and pushing between person and object, and between object and space, into the form of competing cars driven by people.
Kang wants this to be a space packed full of energy. Human breath and the sound of running, the roar of engines, and the many sounds of the city fill a virtual space. A form made in VR is brought into reality, and AR becomes a mirror for looking into that virtual space. Endlessly repeating pieces cross at random and erase the form.
A Video Chatbot in a Contactless Time
This is a time when COVID-19 has made contactless exhibitions common. Kang places a video chatbot inside the gallery so that visitors can ask the artist a question and hear an answer. The screen offers the question first, inviting visitors to ask. In a period when meeting the artist is difficult, it makes one more way to sit across from him in the gallery.
Exhibition Information
Title: Endless force : explosion Artist: Minseok Kang (9th solo exhibition) Dates: 2 – 9 October 2021 Venue: DOT MUSEUM, Busan · Galleries 1 and 2 Works: 34 paintings and three-dimensional works Art project: SPEED LINE · 3 × 3 × 1.9 m · Acrylic on Woodrock Support: Busan Metropolitan City · Busan Cultural Foundation
