Artist Eddie Kang’s works are told through various characters, born from Kang’s very personal experiences. Cherishing artist’s memories, these characters at times speak on behalf of the artist and illustrate events and emotions. New works in this exhibition are a record of Kang’s emotions, layered piece by piece over the course of past year. And majority of his drawing pieces, which have yet been public before, are a long-kept story of Kang’s special collection of unforgettable memories and experiences and evidence of constant emotional flows. And by projecting these stories through characters to speak and sympathize with the audience, Kang wishes to send condolences and hopeful messages.

To Kang, work of creation is the process of making a spell that awakens the importance of pure heart and long-forgotten things to the modern, dreamless man. Wishing that the exhibition would shed a positive light to rid the anxiety and disappointment in people’s minds, the artist casts a heartfelt spell, “We will be alright” to all those withdrawn amidst the unsettling society.

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Works by Kang in this exhibition are the physical outcome of the stark time of endurance by the artist over his very personal losses in recent years. Any loss tends to result in dramatic chasm between the real and emotional time, where mourning resides. Hence, after such loss encroaches, we tend to experience an isolated pain for some time over the chasm, feeling like the world has turned upside down. Kang must have had to give into such pain for a period of time following a loss. But at certain point in time, Kang began to search for ways to escape from the isolated pain and decided to go on a journey to secure enough distance from the real time. Kang didn’t stop drawing in this journey, and these works play a crucial role in this exhibition. But these works show different characteristics from his other drawings, because they show similar context found in literature, mourning through language and records. The media which drawing works are materialized, such as sketchbook, note pads in hotel rooms, maps, and post cards, are the materialized results of his emotional time. Hence, his act of drawing a line or painting on the materialized emotional time is like weaving condolence on the emotional time. But one thing to highlight is that Kang doesn’t simply draw everything in the abstract realm, but rather aligns characters that advocate his situation and emotions, like LOVELESS, MIX, and YETI, with phrases like “WE WILL BE ALRIGHT,” “MISSING YOU,” “I WILL ALWAYS BE THERE FOR YOU,” “UPSIDE DOWN,” LOOP,” and “GOT TO FIND MY WAY,” to create visual stories. Surely, these visualized stories are of artist’s very personal experiences. But because these stories aren’t any different from human’s universal inclination to experience joy and sorrow while moving towards the ultimate death in life, they carry a public aspect while being very personal. So while Kang’s works in this exhibition are fundamentally directed to himself, they can also be for all of us. Fortunately, Kang seems to have gone through intensive mourning from this trip and eventually synchronize the real and emotional time. But one must focus on what made his efforts successful because mourning simply doesn’t heal on its own and requires constant struggle. Answer to that question will be blatant in one of the rooms on the second floor, towards the end of the exhibition. Then what is the answer that can be rediscovered from that room? I believe they are “even if so” and “hope.”

Hong, Tae Lim (Art Critic)