Celebrating his 40th anniversary as an artist this year, Ik-Joong Kang (b. 1960) moved to New York in 1984 and has since worked on the global stage, embedding messages of "communication and harmony," "unity and connection" in his art. His work began during his studies abroad when he carried small canvases, filling them with various texts, symbols, and drawings that captured his daily life. Kang later expanded these small canvases into large-scale installations, evolving into major public art projects that connect and integrate diverse elements.
Since his first year abroad in 1984,
the artist, who had been working part-time and attending school at the same
time, carried several small 3-inch (7.6cm×7.6cm) canvases in his pocket and
worked on them on the subway in his spare time. He recorded his daily
experiences in messages, symbols, and images on the miniature canvas—things
like crowds on a train, sketches, and English words. Another common element in
his work is Korean subject matter, such as moon jars and Hangeul.
The “3-inch” series of works, which
began as a panel of Kang's personal history of migrating to New York, cultural
disparity, and everyday motifs of his hometown and New York, overlap Korea and
the United States, his childhood and present, home and away, past and present.
In his two-person exhibition with Nam June Paik, “Samramansang:
Multiple/Dialogue,” held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
Korea in 2009, he presented Samramansang, a giant
installation of more than 10,000 “3-inch” works from 1984 to 2014.
The small 3-inch images add up,
connect, and unite with each other, evoking a vast universe, ‘Samramansang’.
The chrome-plated Bodhisattva statue installed in the center of the background
projects the works on the wall, connecting the world of small canvases as the ‘Avalokitesvara’,
a being that “sees the sound of all the worlds connected to each other.
Ik-Joong Kang, 100,000 Dreams, 1999 ©Hakgojae Gallery
Kang's
small 3-inch canvases later evolved into participatory public art works that
gathered drawings from ordinary people, not the artist's own, to create a wall.
For example, 100,000 Dreams,
installed in Paju Unification Park in 1999, was a large-scale multi-media
installation in an open-air greenhouse that displayed drawings by 50,000
children and youth from South Korea, the United States, France, the United
Kingdom, Greece, and other countries, along with video footage of children
talking about their dreams. An attempt to collect the drawings of 50,000 North
Korean children was unsuccessful, leaving only a blank wall named “Wall of
Silence”.
Kang
said he organized 100,000 Dreams to transcend ideology and wish for a
peaceful future for Korea and other countries in conflict. His method of
bringing together and connecting the stories of different individuals has
continued to serve as a bridge for understanding others and dreaming of a
future of peaceful communities.
Kang has shown a deep interest in
traditional Korean elements such as the ‘moon jar’ and ‘Hangeul (the Korean
alphabet)’. Both motifs embody Korean tradition and, structurally, they reflect
the core theme of "connection" in his work. Just as consonants and
vowels come together to form a complete letter in Hangeul, the moon jar is
created by joining its upper and lower parts.
In his work 1,392 Moon
Jars (2008-2010), Kang arranged 1,392 moon jars in a circular
formation, symbolizing individuals and their connection to the broader world.
He envisions an image of peace that connects "you and me,"
"North and South," and ultimately the entire world, inspired by the
moon jar, which is created by separately making the upper and lower parts and
then uniting them into a single form in the kiln.
Kang's large-scale public art works
have continued since 100,000 Dreams (1999), which
chronicled the dreams of children, and have attracted much attention in Korea
for his installation Moon over Gwanghwamun
(2007-2010) at the site of the restoration of Gwanghwamun Gate, while overseas,
he has installed works in various public spaces to convey the message of
connection and harmony.
Among them, his large-scale,
three-story-high installation Floating Dreams (2016),
which was installed on the Thames River in London, consists of 500 drawings of
displaced people who lost their homes and families during the Korean War. The
artist personally traveled around the country and asked displaced people he met
to draw their hometowns in their memories, which he then turned into a giant
square lantern structure that shone brightly on the Thames River in London. The
giant lanterns, gathered as cherished memories of home, convey the pain of
division and the faith in a future reunification.
Ik-Joong Kang, Hangeul Wall, 2024 ©Korean Cultural Center NY
In May
of this year, Kang launched the ‘Hangeul Wall Project,’ which is open to anyone
in the world. Together with the Korean Cultural Center NY, he created a website
(www.hangeulwall.org) where anyone can create their own Hangeul artwork by
typing and coloring a single sentence or piece of wisdom that they cherish
most, based on the theme of “Things I love to about.” He also provided a
Hangeul translation function so that people who don't know Korean can
participate, bringing everyone's stories together in one place. After selecting
1,000 of them, Kang will unveil the world's first and largest public artwork in
Hangeul, measuring 8 meters by 22 meters, at the Korean Cultural Center NY this
September.
Just
like the Hanguel, where scattered consonants and vowels come together to form a
single letter, Kang brings together the precious stories of individuals
scattered around the world to create a place of harmony and understanding. Kang
says that his role as an artist is to connect different or disconnected things
through art.
He
gathers different voices and connects them into a single work, which is then
shown and read by many people in public spaces, creating new connections. In
this way, Kang’s work revitalizes the sense of connectedness by making it
intuitive and easy to understand others and coexistence.
“When we look around us, small things come together to form a big story, and this becomes our life. I think it is essential for us to connect with other beings, and art should play this role. Therefore, in the world we live in now, I have been working as an artist as an antenna to connect the gap between looking up to the sky and looking down to the ground.”
Ik-Joong
Kang was born in 1960 in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. After receiving
a degree in Western painting from Hongik University in 1984, he left for New
York, where he studied at the Pratt Institute. Since graduating from there in
1987, he has been based in New York. Ik-Joong Kang had a two-person show “Multiple
/ Dialogue” (1994) with Nam June Paik at the Whitney Museum of American Art at
Champion, and was awarded the Special Merit Award by representing the Korean
Pavilion at Venice Biennale (1997). Since then, he has worked on numerous
large-scale public projects at home and abroad.
Kang’s
work has been included the collections on numerous major art institutions in
Korea and abroad, including the Guggenheim Museum (New York); the British
Museum (London); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; the Museum
Ludwig (Cologne); the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
(Seoul); the Seoul Museum of Art; the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Ansan),
and the Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul).
In
addition to painting, Kang also expresses his everyday discoveries in writing,
publishing poetry and art collections such as The Water in Your
Heart Must Be Calm for You to See Me (2022), Sarubia
(2019), and Moon Jar (2018). At the moment, he is
involved in ongoing studies for a dream project of his: “Bridge of Dreams” on
the Imjin River connecting North and South Korea.
References
- 갤러리현대, 강익중 (Gallery Hyundai, Ik-Joong Kang)
- 청주시립미술관, 청주 가는 길: 강익중 (Cheongju Museum of Art, Journey Home: Ik-Joong Kang)
- 국립현대미술관, 강익중 | 삼라만상 | 1984 – 2014 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), KANG Ikjoong | Sam-ra-man-sang | 1984 – 2014)
- 학고재 갤러리, 십만의 꿈 (Hakgojae Gallery, 100,000 Dreams)
- 문화일보, 강익중 밀레니엄 프로젝트 ‘십만의 꿈’개막
- Thames Festival Trust, Floating Dreams by Ik-Joong
- 뉴욕한국문화원, 한글벽 프로젝트 (Korean Cultural Center NY, Hangeul Wall Project)