Installation view of 《Subcenter》 (OCI Museum of Art, 2013) ©OCI Museum of Art

Dongju Kang – Drawing the Interface of Chiaroscuro through Chiaroscuro
 
01. Emerging artist Dongju Kang (b. 1988), confronted with the shared contemporary question—“what to draw, when, how, where, and by whose hands?”—endeavors to redefine and reinvent the act of “drawing” through a problematic form that corresponds to a post-medium situation.

02. When a young painter is said to have found her subject matter, this implies not only that she has identified the overarching theme that will guide her lifelong artistic practice, but also that she has discovered the most suitable materials and forms through which to express it. In the case of Dongju Kang, the content that compels her toward a final form is the city as a space of chiaroscuro, or more precisely, the chiaroscuro interfaces of urban space. The optimal materials for realizing this inquiry are pencils, carbon paper, and paper that follow specific protocols, as well as oil paint and canvas.

(Note: According to Tanizaki Jun’ichirō [1886–1965], chiaroscuro refers to “a darkened appearance that seems like shadow, yet is not quite shadow; like shade, yet not exactly shade.”)

03. In the 'Parade' series developed between 2010 and 2011, the artist took urban dust barriers as her subject, attempting to depict both that which conceals and that which is concealed at the same time. She photographed dust screens in the city and translated these images into oil paintings. (In a few exceptional cases, she painted from photographs of dust screens taken by others.) Works titled after specific locations—such as Angang Middle School, 236-06 Seokchon-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, Goam Building, and KCC, Choseong-ri, Cheolsan-myeon, Yeoncheon-gun, Gyeonggi-do—became the starting point of her painterly inquiry into the interface between visibility and invisibility, as well as a foothold for her aesthetic development.

04. Feeling a certain dissatisfaction with the ambiguity inherent in the 'Parade' series, the artist developed in 2012 a self-evident, somewhat tedious, and even humorous series titled “The Condition of Things That Cannot Be Seen Because There Is No Need to See Them.”

During long daily bus rides, she drew only the partings of hair on the backs of heads she inevitably saw—limited strictly to the head of the person seated directly in front of her. Each drawing was accompanied by the bus number, drawing number, date, and time of production (for example, the first drawing was titled 720-1 01.15 08:15).

(Note: Although produced in transit, these bus drawings may be understood as possessing spatiotemporal specificity, in that the artist accepted the spatial constraints of movement as an integral part of the work.)

05. Dongju Kang’s distinctive working method—recording the interface between visibility and invisibility through a calibrated mode of chiaroscuro—began to fully emerge in her 2012 solo exhibition 《Blackout》.

Dongju Kang, Light of Subcenters, 2013, Pencil on paper, 30x122cm (26 pieces) ©Dongju Kang

《Blackout》 Project, Part 1:
From 8:00 p.m. on May 3 to 8:00 p.m. on May 4, 2012, the artist positioned herself at the exhibition space located at 256 Nuhadong, using the glass window as an intermediary zone (interface). Every hour, she observed the movements of the residential area across the street as reflected on the glass and translated the trajectories of light into carbon-paper drawings.

(Note: While three forms of drawings were produced—the drawing on carbon paper, the drawing transferred onto the blank paper beneath it, and the reversed drawing transferred from the carbon paper—only the carbon-paper drawings were exhibited in the gallery space. The transferred drawings on the reverse side of the blank paper—where light was transposed into chiaroscuro—were revealed solely through their reproduction in exhibition promotional materials.)

《Blackout》 Project, Part 2:
Interpreting the wooden boards attached to the back of the glass window at 256 Nuhadong as an interface that generates invisibility, the artist decided to remove them and incorporate them into the exhibition as part of the work. On the day the boards were dismantled, she carved the movements of the day’s scenery into the surface of the removed planks using chisels and hammers over approximately 258 minutes—the total combined duration of the previously executed 25-hour drawing project (from May 3 to May 4).

The exhibition opened on May 25, 2012, at 7:00 p.m. at 256 Nuhadong, Jongno-gu, in complete darkness illuminated only by flashlights, and ran until June 8. Viewing hours were restricted to between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

06. For her second solo exhibition 《Subcenter》, scheduled to open in August 2013, Dongju Kang developed three series: Light Drawing, Moon Drawing, and Sky Painting. These three series collectively constitute a single project based on video documentation of an automobile journey traversing subcenter areas of the city.

The artist planned a route beginning in the Cheongnyangni redevelopment district, passing through Yeongdeungpo, and returning to Cheongnyangni. On February 25, 2013—the day of the full moon—she drove a passenger vehicle (a Sorento) starting at sunset (6:28 p.m.), recording the streetscapes on both sides of the road and the sky above using three video cameras.

(The detailed route was as follows: Cheongnyangni – Dongdaemun – Jongno – Gwanghwamun – Chungjeong-ro – Ahyeon – Sinchon – Hapjeong – Yanghwa Bridge – Yeongdeungpo – Yanghwa Bridge – Hapjeong – Sinchon – Ahyeon – Chungjeong-ro – Gwanghwamun – Jongno – Dongdaemun – Cheongnyangni.)

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