The Twelfth Solo Exhibition
Minseok Kang's twelfth solo exhibition, The Big Bang : Identity No.2, opens at the BNK Busan Bank Gallery in Busan. It runs seven days, from 6 to 12 October, with twenty works in all, among them seven at 100ho and two at 60ho. The 2023 Busan Arts and Culture Support Program of Busan Metropolitan City and the Busan Cultural Foundation supports the exhibition.
It is the second chapter following The Big Bang : Identity, held earlier the same year at Polestar Art Gallery in Seoul. Kang works in Busan, taking the distorted form of the automobile to address the conflict between his inner world and his own existence.
Everything Begins at an Infinite Origin — The Artist’s Note
Everything Begins at an Infinite Origin — The Artist's Note
"The source of my force began at an infinite origin. The force of the beast, whose heart is filled with the anger deep inside me, collides, and through time, space and physical speed it explodes. In that explosion the pounding of my heart and my quickened breathing fill with white noise."
The beast is the name Kang gives the darkness inside him. The note does not end by defeating it. "The beast, dulled by anger and by the pain of time, is my fear and a being that keeps pace with me, racing alongside between the beginning and the end." It is not removed. It runs beside him.
Metacognition — Seeing Oneself from Outside
The method Kang uses in this exhibition is metacognition. Instead of undergoing himself from within, he looks from outside. He sets on the canvas, in perspective, a self isolated in time and space, and from that position intense colors burst out.
Perspective is not used here to make the form clear. It is used to set a vanishing point, push everything toward it, and make a place where the form comes apart.
Pushed with a Squeegee — How It Is Made
He begins with speed and force at the origin. The form of the car distorted by time, and the pattern of straight lines, are made by pushing paint with a squeegee rather than a brush. Once pushed, it cannot be taken back.
Into the Timeleap works go primary colors and embroidery thread. The straight line a thread makes rises above the surface and builds a grain you can see in relief.
Endless Force · Timeleap — Two Series
Endless Force takes the moment of the explosion. "The force I cannot hold and the desire boiling over scatter together with the fragments, and only the trace of the time called now remains." What is left is only now.
Timeleap takes time running at close to the speed of light. The forms on either side of the canvas resemble each other like a decalcomania, but they are not the same. One is the afterimage of a far future, or the shape of the past reflected in a mirror; the artist calls this a story of the butterfly effect.
Exhibition Information
Title: The Big Bang : Identity No.2 Artist: Minseok Kang (12th solo exhibition) Dates: 6 – 12 October 2023 Hours: 11:00 – 18:00 Venue: BNK Busan Bank Gallery, 2F, 13 Gwangbokjungang-ro, Jung-gu, Busan Works: seven at 100ho, two at 60ho, eleven others — twenty in all Support: 2023 Busan Arts and Culture Support Program (Busan Metropolitan City · Busan Cultural Foundation)
