May 02, 2023, Ongoing
Artist Talk: Thursday,May 25, 7PM on ZOOM Webinar: 833 2161 4080
Since the group show “Flow”, painter Michael Hyun Gu Kang has reflected, written, collaged, painted, and even breakdanced around the canvas. "In Motion with Michael Kang" documents the artist's transformations as life evolves and changes. To read curator’s statement scroll to the bottom.
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Get down (2023) | 36 x 17 x 0.75 in. | Acrylic and reflective paint on an aluminum panel
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Guardians of the Secret (2022) | 43.5 x 56 x 6 in. | Acrylic on an art shipping crate
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Here (2022) | 60 x 48 x 2.25 in. | Mixed media on a collaged surface
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Icarus (2023) | 40 x 30 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, colored pencil, paint marker, and oil pastel on canvas
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No time like the present (2023) | 40 x 30 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, colored pencil, paint marker, and oil pastel on canvas
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Siri, play Tokyo Drift (2022) | 41 x 41 x 3 in. | Acrylic, Hanbok fabric, abalone, colored pencil, oil pastel, astroturf, and paint marker on a found framed canvas
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The one hot day in San Francisco (2022) | 40 x 36 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, Hanbok fabric, abalone, pencil, and astroturf on a wooden picture frame
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Korean Dancer 1 (2022) | 10 x 8 in. | Acrylic, colored pencil, and marker on a wooden panel
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Korean Dancer 2 (2022) | 10 x 8 in. | Acrylic, colored pencil, and marker on a wooden panel
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Korean Dancer 3 (2022) | 10 x 8 in. | Acrylic, colored pencil, and marker on a wooden panel
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Korean Dancer 4 (2022) | 10 x 8 in. | Acrylic, colored pencil, and marker on a wooden panel
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A Leap (2023) | 40 x 30 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, Hanbok fabric, paint marker, colored pencil, and oil pastel on canvas
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Halo (2022) | 48 x 48 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, Hanbok fabric, abalone, colored pencil, astro turf, paint marker, oil pastel, foil paper, and drywall texture on a wooden panel.
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Mecha Michael Vs. The Wasps (2023) | 42 x 54 x 2 in. | Acrylic, Hanbok fabric, colored pencil, paint marker, marker, and oil pastel on a lacquered wooden panel.
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The Lab (2023) | 40 x 61.5 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, paint marker, colored pencil, marker, and oil pastel on canvas
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The Shadow (2023) | 40 x 30 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, paint marker, colored pencil, marker, and oil pastel on canvas
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V69 (2023) | 40 x 30 x 1.5 in. | Acrylic, paint marker, colored pencil, marker, and oil pastel on canvas
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In Motion With Michael Kang | Curator Statement by Lonnie Lee
“In Motion with Michael Kang” provides a sense of significant life shifts - marriage, health challenge, loss, grief - and their inevitable impact on multiple levels of our lives, and certainly on the creative soul’s need to express. “In Motion with Michael Kang” allows us to understand these as fields of multi-dimension, similar to The Daniel's epic Oscar-winning film “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.” Life is happening consecutively and collectively; past, present, and future. In “The Shadow” we see a figure with boxing gloves in high guard ready to protect, take down, or defend at once as silhouettes behind suggest the fancy boxer footwork. Kang taps into the feelings and wisdom that life begins as it also ends. We welcome and grieve changes in others and ourselves on the path to discover what we hold true, what we value; and hence more layers of life experience, in motion. Periods of respite and reflection allow us to gather what we need as we move forward. Navigating the nuances to comprehend and understand one’s identity, both heritage and individual, there are surprises along the way.
The central focus of these works is motion; movement from one life event to the next, and the reflection that often happens in a non-linear manner. Michael celebrates his recent marriage, while wrestling with themes of navigating cultural lessons, traditional ancestral customs and expectations, with these burdens and complexities melding as one joyful right of passage. Kang’s ongoing revelations include the discovery of what gets lost in translation as a first generation American born to Korean immigrants, and how each discovery is delightfully similar yet distinctive. “Get Down” and “A Leap” capture an exciting energy of motion, which for the artist started early during his formative years in Orange County, and was further shaped at age 12 by his love of breakdancing. In “Halo” the artist describes the repercussions of spinning on one’s head during breakdancing. His recent episode with gout set new limits on not only diet but on mobility and agility as seen in “Icarus”. Coinciding with the passing of friends and family, these shifts impact the ease with which so much happens, especially when faced with an array of emotions such as glee, joy, enlightenment, shock, disbelief, confounding uncertainty, grief, sadness, and humor. Kang dances through these seminal moments, while the sun is mostly always shining and remains a symbol of a constant in life, even with irreverence - as seen in the “Siri Play Tokyo Drift” flipping birdie. Finding imaginative freedom and a way of allowing anything, whether pizza, traditional Korean dance, riding tigers, or wielding swords at capitalism, these life shifts bring into focus a sense of what does, and does not matter. Kang's self-portrait collage "Here" conveys the amalgamation of such revelation. We get to experience and identify with vignettes in life that are transformative and healing; the motion of life moving in art.
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