Kang Cheol Gyu: Sinking Body

Chapter II is pleased to announce, Sinking Body, a solo exhibition by Kang Cheol Gyu from 7th July to 3rd September in Yeonnam-dong, Seoul. Previously participated Chapter II Residency, Kang Cheol Gyu unveils his new work, which can measure his year-long achievements. It provides a great opportunity to discover the possibility of exploring his intriguing hypothesis that water which had remained as a secondary element in his prior practice could proceed to comprehensively represent human emotions and circumstances.

 

Based on his recognition system allowing him to identify and interpret certain incidents which eventually become his artistic motifs, Kang often arranges a pivotal theme and its supporting peripheral narratives with a sophisticated craft on a canvas as though he were weaving a piece of fabric. In terms of techniques, his painting approach has plenty of similarities with a plot of novels; he either produces a series whose contents are painted on separate frames or conveys them in each grid section divided over one canvas. Certainly, it is not irrelevant to his professional literary career. The hierarchy between painted figures appearing in multi-dimensional backgrounds and its derived conflicts and consequences let the audience be dazed with an experience of simultaneously witnessing the past, present and future of the events unfold in panoramic sequences. Kang’s painting style in which the starting point, progress and conclusion of a story are seemingly connected with an open curve makes an identical tale to have different narrative structures constantly shifting according to a movement of perspectives. 

 

As the title suggests, the exhibition shows its experimental tendency revealed by the ambition of a young artist who has sought to establish particular psychological and existential situations by combining diverse occurrences created when physical bodies respond to water with his authentic staging manner dealing with composition, tonal contrast and description of the backdrops. The described characters in his paintings seem to be caught in the moments of encountering water of different scales or belonging to its properties; the fact that they all are naked indicates that each one is an equal member of the contemporary society rather than a specific group. In his work, Nude (2022), water stands for the social substructure that various people inevitably rely on, whereas it signifies a source of agony or an ambivalent object of evacuation and dependence in Hallucinations (2022). On the other hand, a naked male feature who contemplates the sea waves standing on his hands in Sirsasana (2022) portrays an individual hesitating in front of given life issues, reminiscent of the newly married couple of the novel, ‘A Trip to Gomsk’ by Fritz Ohrtmann. Hence, as the word, ‘solubility’, refers to the water’s extensive receptivity as a natural compound, Kang’s new series is a monologue recorded by an artist who has been fascinated by the flexible and ever-changing aspect of water comparable enough to enigmatic physical phenomena exiting in the ideological realm. 

 

Kang Cheol Gyu (b.1990) graduated with a BFA in Painting and an MFA in Fine Art from Hannam University. He has exhibited solo presentations at Leeungno Museum M2 (2021), Artist Residency TEMI (2020), Gallery Gabi (2018) and Gallery Goat Bean (2017). He attended group exhibitions at Kara’s Gallery (2020), DMA Art Center (2018), Gallery Gabi (2017) and recently an exhibition, Loss, Everything That Happened to Me at Daejeon Museum of Art (2021).