Artist Suki Seokyeong Kang @ Tina Kim Gallery, New York

Suki Seokyeong Kang

Tina Kim Gallery, New York

2 May - 15 June 2024

Tradition is about thinking about the present more deeply.*

—Suki Seokyeong Kang

Tina Kim Gallery presents Suki Seokyeong Kang, the gallery’s second solo exhibition of leading South Korean contemporary artist Suki Seokyeong Kang (b. 1977). Expanding on the themes that characterize Kang’s critically acclaimed multimedia practice, the exhibition includes works never before seen in New York, many of which were specifically created for her major 2023 solo exhibition, Suki Seokyeong Kang: Willow Drum Oriole, held at the Leeum Museum of Art, in Seoul (September 7 - December 31, 2023).

The theme of being present connects the diverse works in this exhibition. Kang’s practice centers on the exploration of tension, boundaries, and balance. Her paintings and sculptures negotiate a harmony between old and new, reinterpreting traditional art forms like Jeongganbo and Chunaengmu in contemporary contexts.1 References to the four seasons, works evoking sound and movement, and the balancing of near and far views create a sense of wholeness and inevitability, asking viewers to find peace and presence in the here and now. 

On view in the gallery are works from Kang’s celebrated series Jeong, Mat, Narrow Meadow, and Mora, as well as two new sculpture series, Mountain and Column. For each of these bodies of work, she has developed a distinct formal vocabulary that combines traditional techniques with specific materials to create dynamic forms inspired by Korean culture yet deeply engaged with contemporary social issues and art history. Rooted in her training as a traditional painter, Kang’s works explore how, despite our many differences, we remain connected. In focusing on how ideas of the past manifest today, Kang employs the traditional concept of “Jinkyung,” or “true-view,” painting, which seeks to represent the essence of the subject through the principle of shared symbolism. In this way, her work frames what she describes as “the beautiful moment of sharing time,” assisting us in being present in a space where “we can constantly reconcile imbalances and conflicts and achieve complete harmony with each other.”

* Quoted in Connie Butler, “The Subtle Smile: Suki Seokyeong Kang’s Sympathetic Object,” in Willow Drum Oriole (Seoul: Leeum Museum of Art, 2023). All quotes by the artist are from this exhibition catalogue. 

1 Jeongganbo is a type of musical notation dating back to the Joseon dynasty, in which the duration and pitch of sounds are notated within a square grid shaped like the character “Jeong” 

(井). Chunaengmu, or the Dance of the Spring Oriole, is a solo Korean court dance that originated during the later period of the Joseon dynasty.

TINA KIM GALLERY

525 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011

tinakimgallery.com

Suki Seokyeong Kang @ Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul - "Willow Drum Oriole" Exhibition

Suki Seokyeong Kang

Willow Drum Oriole

Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul

September 7 - December 31, 2023

Leeum Museum of Art presents Willow Drum Oriole, a solo exhibition of one of Korea’s leading contemporary artists, Suki Seokyeong Kang. Experimenting with the expansive possibilities of painting as a medium through a variety of media and methods, including two dimensional work, sculpture, installation, video, and performance (“activations”), Suki Seokyung Kang’s oeuvre encompasses a wide range of artistic, cultural, and social contexts that are at once traditional and contemporary. This exhibition, the largest institutional solo show of the artist to date, presents works that have been developed from previous series such as Jeong, Mora, Mat, Grandmother Tower, Narrow Meadow, and Tender Meander, as well as Mountain, Ears Hours and Column, a new body of diversified work, including sculptural installations and a video.

Willow Drum Oriole, the title of both the exhibition and a new video work, is a reference to the sages of yore who would read the movements and sounds of the oriole flying in and out of the leaves of willow trees, as if weaving a thread into the fabric of the landscape. Using this metaphor, the artist symbolically reveals a defining characteristic of her work: sensitivity to audiovisual and tactile awareness, combined with spatiotemporal experience. The exhibition unfurls like a landscape painting, spread across and resounding synesthetically through a three dimensional space; in it are mountains reifying the four seasons of the year, day and night stretched over the floor and walls, ears wide open and hovering in the air, narrow yet rich meadows and rounded figures roving around only to linger in place, and various rectangular frames creating spaces for each work, while invisibly delineating the composition of the exhibition. The structures created therein exude rich reverberations arising from between the frames and margins, warmth and coolness, softness and hardness, stillness and movement.

Suki Seokyeong Kang contemplates the territory that society grants to the individual and envisions a “true-view” landscape in which the presence and movement of those around us are perceived and interrelated. Although the works of the landscape each exist in different forms and ways, they collectively unravel a narrative of togetherness as they organically integrate and disperse. The artist thereby presents an arena in which I, you, and we exist wholesomely, persistently mediating our imbalances and differences.

Suki Seokyeong Kang (b. 1977, lives and works in Seoul)

Suki Seokyeong Kang is a visual artist based in Seoul, Korea. Kang’s practice traverses painting, sculpture, performance, video, and installation. Inspired by cultural traditions of Korea as well as contemporary artistic and literary discourses, Kang decodes rules and values that govern these disciplines, turning to artistic languages of the past to construct a contextual lens through which she explores the notion of individuality and freedom in the present moment.

She studied Korean Painting at Ewha Womans University, Seoul and Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. She is Professor of Korean Painting at Ewha Womans University. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Commonwealth and Council, LA, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Mudam Luxembourg, and the ICA Philadelphia. She has been featured in the Venice Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale, and the Gwangju Biennale. In 2018, Kang won the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel.

Suki Seokyeong Kang

Willow Drum Oriole

Exhibition Catalogue co-published by LEEUM / Hatje Cantz

Edited by: Harry C. H. Choi, Lee Hanbum

Texts by: Connie Butler, Harry C. H. Choi, 

Joan Kee, Christine Y. Kim, Michelle Kuo, 

Zoe Whitley, June Young Kwak

English, Korean, 2024, 392 Pages, 300 Ills.

Linen hardcover, 264mm x 190mm

ISBN: 978-3-7757-5293-0

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that reads Kang's practice through a range of varying discourses, such as the history of Korean painting, feminism, and the narratives of the Western avant-garde, with essays by June Young Kwak, Connie Butler (Director, MoMA PS1), Christine Kim (Britton Family Curator-at-Large, Tate), Michelle Kuo (Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA), Zoe Whitley (Director, Chisenhale Gallery). The catalogue is published by Hatje Cantz.

Suki Seokyeong Kang’s Solo Exhibition Willow Drum Oriole is curated by June Young Kwak (Head of Exhibition, Leeum Museum of Art) with June Young Kwak (Curator, Leeum Museum of Art) and in partnership with Bottega Veneta. 

LEEUM MUSEUM OF ART

60-16, Itaewon-ro 55-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, 04348

www.leeumhoam.org