Conversations with JooLee Kang

Today we’d like to introduce you to JooLee Kang.

Hi JooLee, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am practicing contemporary art mostly working in both Korea and the U.S. I came to the States for my graduate school (School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University) in Boston. I stayed there for 7-8 years then, traveling around the west coast, Europe, and Asia for artist residency programs for a couple of years. When my artistic career began to flourish in Korea, I started to be back and forth between Korea and the U.S.
To explain myself as an artist, I would like to explain about the meaning of “art” to me. I believe that art must be a window to communicate constantly with the present and help us understand the world more. That’s why the artwork changes as time goes by, while I experience the world changes. I keep researching and trying to contain the changes. Sometimes it goes towards the direction beyond my expectations. But this is how I communicate with the world. This is the way of which I widely spread the stories of mine and the world in front of us.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Like many other artists, I am trying the best to manage my life as a full-time artist to keep working in my studio and showing my artwork constantly. It could sound disappointing, but I never doubt about it. Although it was difficult to move/travel frequently when I needed to focus on my work, I enjoyed the experience and believed that those times and experiences would grow within me and eventually find their way into my artwork in one form or another.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My painting and installation are a metaphor for the close bond between humanity and nature, which are often thought of as being in diametrical opposition, or a relationship of subordination, but are in fact woven together like a single piece of fabric. The hybridity of images in my work revealed my examination about expressing complex tendencies and double side of something which is beautiful, at the same time not beautiful.
The title of my artist’s book published recently, “No Arrow of Time”, is conceived in opposition to the physics concept of the “Arrow of Time” — the idea that time flows in a single direction, divided into past, present, and future. It refers instead to the perspective that the flow of time is a phenomenon constructed by human consciousness, and that time, regarded as a dimension analogous to space, is a state in which all events exist simultaneously. It also carries the claim that the passage of time can vary relatively depending on the observer’s velocity and gravitational conditions. “No Arrow of Time” is a metaphor for my own working process — one that does not move in a single direction, but exists as pure moment, where labor that consumes an infinitely long time intersects with choices made in an instant.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
I use ink on paper mainly and cross-hatching technique which layering short lines create figure and depth. I like the idea of non-erasable which makes to focus on each dots and lines. When it goes wrong I need to deal with it, not just erase and redo. If I obsess and keep working on the wrong part, it reveals more. I better to let it go and work on other parts first, give myself distance that I can see it right, and come back later. I think it is exactly same as the life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jooleekang.blogspot.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jooleekang
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/jooleekang

Image Credits
Profile photo by Sungjin Chung

Artwork photos ⓒ JooLee Kang