Lot 1050: KANG HYUNG KOO

KANG HYUNG KOO
(b. 1954)
Vincent Van Gogh in Light
oil on aluminium board
240 x 240 cm. (94 1/2 x 94 1/2 in.)
Painted in 2008

Hyung Koo Kang, exh. cat., Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea, 2009 (illustrated, unpaged).

Kang Hyung Koo, celebrated for his technical virtuosity in assimilating emotional, political, social and cultural thematic in singular visual motif of a portraiture has taken a different route in expression as he challenged himself by using a drill to carve depth and wrinkles on to a glossy plane of aluminum. Although Kang preserves his customary tendency of warping the epidermis into his own exploratory realm by magnifying the facial features to reveal a diversity of emotions through shocking details of facial frauds along with his habitually attended emphasis on depicting the eye; he yet again strives to challenge himself by this time, shunning the gaze of the protagonist away from the viewer in Vincent Van Gogh in Light (Lot 1050).

The reflective surface of the aluminum mirrors us- the painting becoming intimately different depending on the viewer or perhaps even becoming uniquely ours through literally our personal visual interpretation. With this characteristic, we grasp a see-through ethereal presence of Van Gogh, successfully emitting an ambiance of a walking Van Gogh as we perceive the profile that is carried by the illumination of lighting that freely roams against its plane, imbuing a sense of a shifting face. The solemn grey of aluminum lures a melancholy aura with his aged and grey hair and his weighty and hollow blue eyes. We catch a fleeting moment of a glimpse of a tear, quickly drying up to effectively verify that Kang's new medium encompasses a capricious force that transforms its aesthetics depending on time, lighting and the viewer's stance.

Van Gogh's influential mastery of Impressionism is most certainly apparent in Kang's premeditated choice in medium; the intense colors that concentrated on light and its varying qualities which consequently bring upon an open composition. Kang too provides such mannerism in his adept exploitation of the reflective surface of aluminum that shifts images, consequently enlightening the viewer and lastly granting an infinite ambiance to its mirroring depth. Perchance due to his long term encounter with Van Gogh as a subject, Kang traces physical features of himself within Van Gogh's face, unconsciously building a self reflection and connection with the phenomenal artist.