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.

Ik-Joong Kang, Samramansang, 1984-2014 ©MMCA

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.

Ik-Joong Kang, Floating Dreams, 2016 ©Ik-Joong Kang

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.

Ik-Joong Kang, Floating Dreams, 2016 ©Ik-Joong Kang

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.”

Artist Ik-Joong Kang ©Gallery Hyundai

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.

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