[강성훈]Showing up with the Wind

Showing up with the Wind

 

 

By Lee Sun-young, Art Critic

Animals in Kang Sung-hoon’s work appear free as the wind. They move, shaking off their weight and gravity, or scatter as elements of the wind. The exhibition, subtitled Windymal, compounding words ‘windy’ and ‘animal’, underscores the unified state of the two. In his work the combination is neither external or mechanical. As the artist suffers from excessive sweating, he always feels the wind as very fresh. This feeling is expressed through animal forms in his work. His sculpture is a visualization of wind blowing around an animal’s muscles with the flow of metal strips. 

Paradoxically, the wind he depicts appears free; but his work is the result of intense labor. Art is created at a point where the quantitative is converted to the qualitative; or inevitability leaps into liberty. His work is labor-intensive and time-consuming for welding strips of metal, without the goal of any representation of a fixed form. 

When producing his work - three-dimensional drawing, perhaps - he does not rely heavily on drawing. Impromptu and sensuous elements are more important in making his work. Without depending on a preliminary drawing, he modifies form while modeling. As his sculpture underlines a sense of movement, speed, and the chaos of wind it appears dynamic. His sculpture has volume occupying three-dimensional space, but retains an immaterial element. It shows a shift of dimension in similar objects, from positive to negative, sculpture to painting, material to immaterial. As conversion is emphasized here the reality of original form is secured. Due to dialects in his work, imaginary, mythic animals are left unaddressed. A variety of animals are created through bunches of dynamic metal strips, congregated and scattered, with animals parts waving in the wind. 

The body here is made up of bunches of creases and irregular holes, and its back appears variable. And a dynamic effect is created with lighting. The forms of an elephant, hippopotamus, sea lion, and tiger are visible, while the shapes of a rhinoceros, eagle, longhorn beetle, and dolphin, all somewhat blurred are placed on a wall as a painting. The thickness of dynamic metal strips, representing animal hair and creased skin, are between from 2 mm to 6 mm. There are five kinds of metal strips with different thicknesses, applied to each body section of an animal, in relation to their size. Each steel strip becomes a pencil or a brush line drawn in the air. An animal horn, claw, or tooth is rendered in stainless steel. This rendition gives reality to the animal, interacting with its body’s unrealistic expression.

Kang’s animal image, appearing and disappearing with the wind, recalls Lucretius’ assertion that “Everything flows.” His sculpture flows, but appears realistic, which probably shows the connection with ancient natural philosophy combing ‘flow’ and ‘logos’. In The Idea of Nature R.G. Collingwood argues Greek natural science is based on the principle that “The natural world is filled with mind.” The natural world ancient people had assumed was the world of movement. The Greek people thought movement itself derived from life or soul. For Aristotle, the natural world was the world of moving objects, or the world characterized by spontaneous movements, not inertia. Nature itself is a process, growth, and change. 

Michel Serres, in his book titled Hermes, the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology wearing winged sandals, brings life to a classical system. Serres underlines a motor, instead of equilibrium and harmony inherent in the system. Any movement in the solar system arises out of temperature differences. Movement brings about continuous creations. Creation began in a day, but will never end. A planet has a sea and the air as a mark indicating its history. The law of forming general objects is applied to the formation of planets. As the formation of things, human history has proceeded from the soft to the solid, from the sticky to the hard. 

Kang’s sculpture relates back to previous events and situations. His work in which the flow of energy and information comes in and out demonstrates a living system condensing all temporality of generation, growth, and extinction in one space. His sculpture featuring an animal’s bodyline appears stable in structure, but shows some discontinuous parts signifying a rapid change which derives another form and modification. In Kang’s work, this energy, lying in the dynamics of a greater system is specified as the phenomenon of the wind. 

Both clear, vigorous form, and gentle fluidity appear in Kim’s work. The energy moving bunches of minute creases, spreading like a topographic map, also appears in his work. Nature exists in his work as a form of energy – “the energy combining all systems” (Michel Serres). Kang’s work visualizes the wind in dynamics between energy and system. The wind, created through line gathering and scattering, generates a chaotic stream. Relations lend form to objects, namely, give birth to entities. Serres considers this chaotic stream a disorderly state, or a whirlpool in a huge whirlpool. This whirlpool appears unstable, and enlarged at an explosive speed. Smoke rises smoothly, but grows rough and divided into several parts, turning to a whirlpool. 

A certain fluidity generates a whirlpool, creating smaller whirlpools. Each whirlpool has unique rhythms and fluid energy. The motifs creation and extinction, flow and rhythm, proceed and escape coexist in the whirlpools, implying Kang’s work lies in the place where desire and matter are shared. The vitality and dynamism a moving animal exudes create a flow not confined to the organism. As Gilles Deleuze stated in The Fold, a whirlpool made by extension and proliferation shows a mixture of straight lines with different curvatures. According to Deleuz inflection creates folds from fluctuations, bringing fluctuations to the infinity. Casting refers to modulation in a limited way, and modulating means casting in a continuous, ever-changing manner. Folds encompass another fold. This movement sets off from a fixed coordinate system, separating art from defined, tedious labor. Movement from a closed to open state is a critical element intimidating the homeostasis of organisms. In addition, closedness dominating a fixed system is a more oppressive fatal element. In Kang’s work the flow of energy that tends to separate and disperse more diversely aspires toward diversity, or diversified objects. 

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작가 홈페이지 : http://kangsunghoon.kr/