Chandong Kim (Curator)
Editor of the quarterly magazine, Misul gwa Damron (Art & Discourse)

1.
Kang first appeared on the major scene of Korean Modern art in the mid 60s as a member of ‘Noncol’ coterie group. Kang himself wanted to be remembered as having tried recklessly to create anew and grope for new thoughts and experiments. As a result, he never got himself so close to the mainstream while possessing some resources himself for recognition, since much of mainstream art was either manipulated or fabricated by the institutionalized system whereas at the peripherals were the values that he sought and thought of having legitimate worthiness.
The history of Kang’s work can roughly be divided into fourfold. The first is his activities during the mid-60s when he made his debut with ‘Noncol’ as well as exhibitions such as ‘신전’ and ‘청년작가연립전’ focus info on performance art and the experimental. The second and third were multifarious object art in the 70s and the work of ‘linearity’ in the 80s, respectively. The last of his art are sure to be remembered as a major transformation of various concepts he had been putting on trials; juxtaposition of various on-canvas materials to create a ‘narrative’. All of Kang’s works were, however, based on the thought which featured the acknowledgement of new modern methodology in the country’s conventional way of reception. The whole art world of Korea operated in a way that conventionalized and solidified much of the new measures taken from the western culture, precisely the reason for Kang’s keeping certain distance from the mainstream arena. And this position of Kang was fully justified in his own right because, besides the intrinsic nature of the system, the system was being run predominantly by the political factions that focused on imitation and appropriation of what they received and perceived form the west, not to mention the lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the western culture. Although at times he rode together with the mainstream elements, he mostly rested his art on the traditional climate and investigated closely his own deeds. Kang, being the first in the country to perform technology art, run exclusive printmaking workshop, to do the first performance art, and come up with the revolutionizing idea of the concept of collective creation studio. The peripherals and the artists revolving around non-mainstream (or the faction out of power) realm of activities were more of a concern for him, thus being remembered as an artist that truly immersed himself in investigating Korean cultures and philosophy.

Then it was his intention to dissolve the limitations posed by the mainstream by keeping away from it, simultaneously working his way up to the new summit, willingly facing numerous challenges. His journey towards another new art was in a way to probe into the Bohemian life of visual art. Our art world has been more about justification of deeds by the main current parties, oversimplifying the potentials via standards. And those potentials need to be rediscovered by someone capable of the job, such as Kang himself.

2.
A. The itinerary of Kukjin Kang: Experiments after Abstract
The Korean art world at the time of 1965 was being dominated by the surge of Informel and Abstract Expressionism which were stylized and spread without potent understanding of its intrinsic value and philosophy they were based on. This was something that Kang could not take, certainly on some particular conditions. Amidst such atmosphere, Kang’s creation studio at Hongjedong crematorium (now place of Goeun Primary School), having had been run by ‘Noncol’, was the symbol of, or even natural habitat for radical artistic activities of the young.
Those youngsters led by Kang were in search of new artistic language through strenuous routines of experiments, not to mention trying to shed the mainstream influence. This was never easy for the group to materialize, but they finally made a breakthrough in their ambitious exhibition ‘Chungnyun jakka yeunlipjun’ in the 1967. The organization of the show consisted of three groups, ‘Shin Jun’ coterie, ‘Mu’, and ‘Origin’. Kang worked for ‘Shin Jun’group which mostly experimented performance art and was the most avant-garde of the three, whereas the other two were more concerned with 3-D and installation art (‘Mu’), or geometrical abstraction (‘Origin’). The other two of course held their own esteem towards the experimental in their format or sociological message, but ‘Shin Jun’was different in that they really got stuck in to rake up the muck about the discrepancy of Korean art world and its banalities through the means of performance art. They hence created and utilized their own language to reprimand the way that the system was run and perceived. Kang was at the forefront of all this, organizing numerous performances and such performances were regarded as unique products of the country’s circumstances having born critical views of their own towards social, civil matters. Of the ‘Shin Jun’ coterie members, Kang, Chanseung Jung and Kangja Jung had a passion in crafting such works.

A series of performance art pieces were introduced to the world; Happening with vinyl umbrella and candle light in 1967 as part of ‘Chungnyun jakka yeunlipjun’, Transparent balloon and Nude and Murder at Han riverside in 1968, and Funeral ceremony of the established art and culture in Seoul in 1969. As one can imagine, those were not readily, or even at all received by the public, considering the social conditions of the time, seemingly promoting improper, unsettling and provocative messages to socio-political arena. They were even dubbed by the art world ‘cultural thugs’ and ‘depraved artists doing crazy things’. Even as they introduced the so-called ‘audience-friendly’ and ‘post-Abstract Expressionism’, their efforts were to be in vain because of the repressive social conditions at the time.
What the factions in power argued as a legitimate works of art was received by the youngsters as a transplanted pirate edition, largely because such cultural imitations were not done out of a necessity nor they were not imitated properly either. Furthermore, this is also the reason why they called their newly created art the ‘post-Abstract Expressionism’. Besides the confrontational relationship with the established and in some ways public viewing, Kang and others displayed techno-art using stainless steel and neon in a work named The joy of Vision in 1967, the first of its kind in the country. Kang spends much of his years in the 60s for performance and media pieces in a lush range of forms and compositions.

B. Object and daily life; an inquiry into their relationship
Getting into the 70s, Kang starts concentrating relatively more on object art. It was part of the drift that swept the youngster’s art scenes at the time, mainly springing from their interest in pop art and neo-avantgarde. Then along came the influence of Minimalism, conceptual art and Japanese Mono-ha, producing evermore 3-D and object art. Kang’s pieces were mainly based on refuses and junks from daily life which showed his interest in everyday object and environmental art. It is then notable what he displayed at his first personal exhibition in 1973 in Myungdong gallery. The exhibition was given the title Interrelation of Forms, a modified version of his work in ‘Chungnyun jakka yeunlipjun’ in the sense that it contained more of Kukjin Kang and his own communicative language. The show was filled with various appearances of materials and the concept of circumstantial variables. These were made of materials such as white cotton cloths, ropes, coarse straw ropes, corrugated cardboards and Korean paper handmade from mulberry trees to bring into relief the physical properties through the materials’ original character and property and their contrasting relativity. ‘Independant’, another show of his in 1973-4 inherits the same character in his conceptual art. Kang had attracted the attention of many at the time with a 3-D work for which he set up a sleeper on the floor, wrap it around with cloths and tie the body with strings. This work showed his effort to continue his interest in peculiar relativity of material and situational factors. This effort of Kang was to buck the Japanese Mono-ha influence, taken by Koreans and too heavily stylized, rendering its contemporary releases monotoned and plane-delineated. Instead, Kang pursued more variety of communicative factors and languages. Another example is the exhibition ‘Seoul Bangbub Jun’ (Seoul Exhibition of Method) in association with another artist, Han Kim in 1977. In display Kim and he provided an opportunity for a path-breaker from oversimplified and stylized modus operandi, showing a lush range of expression modes such as 3-D, object, conceptual art, drawing, etc. His passion for endless experimentation is also demonstrated in his personal exhibition dedicated to print works in 1975. Moreover, he was the first person in the country to run a print workshop to educate art students alongside with many endeavors to allow others to realize the importance of printmaking and to facilitate more variety into the Korean art world.

C. The essence of linearity and painting
Moving into the 80s, the central idea of standardizedness and uniformity of monotone paintings and the art of formalism were challenged by the society demanding more colorful approaches to creation. The boisterous years of the 80s had, on one hand, realist tendencies that emphasized socio-political function of art and on the other hand, showed many miscellaneous discourses which conceptually distanced themselves from art critique of dichotomous scene of art world. And these activities and says were possible because of the circumferential action and vitality by those who carried out various experimental works. There existed an enormous black hole-like body that specialized in monotone paintings and ‘White’ while diverse range of formative art was being put on trial.

What these separate discourses imply is the changed mindset for verified use of western culture and appropriation of the sorts to reinterpret western format with our traditional perspective. They also share the large framework of with the so-called ‘Minjoong Misul’ (Popular art), inclination to participatory measures to realism, and such framework has in it the conventional perception towards artistic expression of Korea and sheer realization of reality.
While it was almost inevitable for the dynamics of the art world to be dichotomized into social realism and formalism, there definitely existed the multifarious spectrum intended to shift away from the 70s’ standardization of art. There came a new wave of willingness to experiment different settings as well as an awakening to work of re-doing and reinterpretation of things.
Kang’s personal take on this subject was to go back to the fundamental idea of painting ? the deed of stroking of lines, therefore repeated patterns and strokes integrative accumulation of straight lines. But he also intended to have a double-layered structure for which certain figurative forms appear on the screen packed with repeated line strokes. In fact, the nature of his deed was to seek the fundamental property of painting by making what is already painted come to naught and their correlativity. Plus, by proposing spiritual and sentimental elements to the original setting involving accumulative, repetitive and relative denominators, he was raising the further questions about the fundamentals, not at all like the mainstream factions who examined the fundamentals of painting by probing the footsteps of their predecessors.
What is saying is that the rhythm and cadence of linearity cannot be explained by the thought that painting is not just painted nor matter-material as an outcome, but a question of its inter-relationship ? the aspect that features the reasoning based on knowledge of traditional values, especially those of art. This thought of Kang is being manifested in his double-layered or ?structure of formative figures and linearity providing us with the sign of reviving the intrinsic delineation of painting itself.

D. Double structure of painting, revival of new narrative
His work dramatically changed as we passed the dawn of the 90s. Superficially, the change featured signs of postmodernism and several attributes seen in other western new-paintings by those like David Salle, Robert Longo and Anselm Kiefer. This means Kang who had been pursuing new directions via what was so-called ‘post-Abstract Expressionism’ also had himself under the influence of those signs widely accepted by many artists around the world, especially the young artists. These artists showed configurations with basis of stammering and raw painting language, multi-dimensional images on a single screen, and rugged internal expressions. But Kang’s could not be said to be coherent with these signs in that the western new-paintings adopted two or more very different images in coexistence on one canvas space, hence bringing in the sense of revival of new allegorical manipulations, which was universally eschewed in the context of Modern art. In their cases, the focus was on pluralized world perspective through commingling of images running counter to each other. But Kang’s focus was mainly on harmonization of contexts put in place by images, thereby rendering relationship between them complementary.
Put on one side of this painting are some concrete and precise images. They are such as the principal images of stone statue of Buddha, eagle that conventionally appear on amulets, traditional images of horserider and rainbow strips. The other side then shows drawings or linear configurations of abstract images emphasizing expressiveness. These two types of elements function as duel pillars in the context of the paintings, reciprocally cooperative so as to tell stories and dig out the fundamentals of painting itself.
His last series of works were carried out during the last 2-3 years of his life, which was largely disappointing as public audience expected to see further developments of his formative measures which came to attain maturity. We don’t know what he intended to do after that. But what we do know is that he displayed signs of his volition to introduce new painterly language while thinking extensively about narratives of incorporating various formative measures, all to gain more technical and philosophical freedom of expression. We are able to see this because there are indications of unification of the images on both sides. This seems to suggest that Kang tried to get away even from the job of probing into the fundamentals of painting to eliminate as much restraints to expression as possible. Therefore, if what the westerners’ neo-expressionism showed were their socio-political messages, Kang’s paintings were more about multiplexity on his view of the world. A careful conclusion from the above may suggest that Kang’s quest for new art through various Modern art trials and experiments ends at the point to which he was led back from his paths of the quest, earning what he wanted: ‘freedom’.

What the above says about Kang is that he walked a significantly different road to discover his potentials. The extreme end of experimental art forms like performance and media art blamed those who accepted western thoughts uncritically and stylized with self-acclaimed standards. Kang was at the forefront of this conflict, distancing himself from the uncritical mainstream influence. It is rather that he used his body to perform actions for criticizing the established than merely using it to practice media.

Thus there is a glorious range of works from objects reinterpreted in artistic context to making kinetic pieces with neon. Constantly being on self-reflective trials, he promoted shifting of objective views of the society through art instead of merely placing meanings on experimentations. Peter Burger and other German critical philosophers argued that the concept and development of avant-garde failed to keep up with the pace of institutionalization of capitalism, thereby being brought to miscarriage. This is a good description of what we have had to go through. He and many other non-mainstream artists lost the fuel for social relevance in the 70s, rendering their experiments go unrecognized or unappreciated.
His work was however the source of multifarious discourses of the non-mainstreamers amid the polirisation during the 70s and 80s: his media experiments, for instance for kinetic art, pioneering of the country’s first collective workshop, printmaking workshop and production of ‘Seoul Bangbub Jun’ (Seoul Exhibition of Method) which acted as the incubator of non-mainstreamers.

The dawn of the 90s brought us a new tendency of countries trying to extensively explore their own unique formative language, and simultaneously those who recklessly appropriated others, taking advantage of globalization. For the former to happen, though, self-reflection is vital, and the recent concern about ‘re-reading Modern art’ has much to do with it. It is too dangerous to ignore the seemingly small and weak veins of endeavor to properly adopt the western measures alongside with effort to reinterpret it through our own conventionality. This is to say that we have to remember those from 60s and 70s who provided immensely helpful guidelines and exemplar cases for such change to occur. There is the other side of our art world’s hardships and potentials beyond the summits raised by the uncritical, heavily institutionalized mainstream factions. And this is precisely the reason why Kukjin Kang is more than praiseworthy in creating a pool of variety to our world of artistic understanding and capacity to reevaluate ourselves.