Korean artist and writer Honggoo Kang's layered photographs, often of urban environments and redevelopment sites in Korea, interrogate the ubiquity of the photographic image and notions of veracity and falsity.
Read MoreKang was born in 1956 in Eouido, a small island in Shinan, South Jeolla Province. After working as an elementary school teacher for five years, Kang went onto study painting at Hongik University of Art, Seoul, where he received his BFA (1988) and MFA (1990).
The artifice of Kang's work is readily recognisable, whether through the conspicuous traces of construction or through the painted elements that the artist inserts into their photographic environments. With wit and a touch of the absurd, Kang examines the processes and aftermath of redevelopment, and memories and reality.
Though originally trained in painting, Kang shifted towards photography in the 1990s for the medium's integral role in the production and distribution of images in the contemporary world. Kang's early works, often made by scanning and collaging images from mass media, were also a reaction against the institution of art, which led him to create 'meaningless, empty, and absurd' photographs as he writes in a statement.
The resulting works were noticeably fake as with 'Who Am I' (1996–7), a series of photographs that saw Kang insert his faces into odd places in urban landscapes or film stills. The artist's bespectacled face repeats across the bodies of men in suits in Who Am I 10, while it suddenly floats above water in Seoul's Han River in Who Am I 16 (1996).
In 'Drama set' (2002), Kang was fascinated by the unapologetic theatricality of drama sets that were turned into tourist attractions after the success of South Korean dramas in select overseas countries. Photographing the sets in black and white, Kang not only captures the various fake facades and streets, but also highlights their fakeness by inserting human figures without shadows.
Among Kang's recurrent subjects are redevelopment areas, near which the artist has lived. The black-and-white series 'Greenbelt' (1999–2001) shows the streets and trees of a greenbelt in Bucheon, which has since undergone redevelopment. Contradictory to its name, the greenbelt was not properly 'green'—as the artist recalled in 2021—and was only conceived and replaced as the urban city required it.
Similar narratives are at play in 'Landscape of Oshoiri' (2004), a small town in Bucheon that was deserted due to aeroplane noises in the 1980s onwards, and 'Vanish Away: A Record of Eunpyeong New Town' (2009), which records the changes in a Seoul district. Mostly in black and white, Kang's photographs observe the underside of urbanisation.
In 2005, upon returning to Shinan for the first time in years, Kang noticed the distance between his memories of his hometown and present observations. For the following 17 years, the artist developed a body of work studying Shinan—as both an insider and outsider—that was presented in his solo exhibition The Sea of Shinan - Mud, Sand and Wind in 2022 at ONE AND J. Gallery in Seoul. Among the works on view was the large-scale painting The Complete Map of Shinan (2022), which, contrary to its title, is not an accurate map of the islands but a subjective representation of the artist's experiences.
A prolific writer of art theory and history, Kang has written broadly about Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, photography, architecture, and artists' ateliers, among others, in Korean.
Honggoo Kang has presented his works in solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include The Sea of Shinan - Mud, Sand and Wind, ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul (2022); House of Human being - Proxemics Busan, Goeun Photo Art Museum, Busan (2013); Vanish Away - A Record of Eunpyeong New Town, Mongin Art Center, Seoul (2009).
Group exhibitions include The City We Have Known, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (2015); (Im)possible Landscape, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2012); Criminal Scenes in Korea, Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul (2010).
His work has been exhibited extensively with recent shows at Mongin Art Center, the Rodin Gallery, Leeum (Samsung Museum of Art), the National Museum of Contemporary Art. He also writes extensively and published five books and a collection of essays.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
