Leekyung Kang (b. 1988) has been exploring hidden or unseen structures within everyday spaces, as well as incomplete states, through painting, printmaking, and installation. Specifically, she integrates digital media with raw physical materials, blending architectural imagery unfamiliar to our daily lives with various experimental approaches across different mediums.

Leekyung Kang’s work begins with an unfamiliar gaze toward everyday environments. She discovers moments of conflict and opposition within situations that might otherwise go unnoticed. Her practice explores the tension and sense of estrangement that arise from ambiguous boundaries—between beauty and the grotesque, construction and deconstruction, order and disorder—while also addressing the difficulty of defining such in-between spaces through visual forms. 
 
For instance, her early painting Forest (2012) reflects a psychological landscape derived from an ordinary natural scene, replacing nature with concrete to highlight an aspect of contemporary society. In this way, her work is rooted in a re-examination of seemingly unremarkable daily landscapes, driven by her imagination and critical perspective. By doing so, she encourages renewed awareness and sensitivity toward the overlooked and desensitized aspects of our surroundings.

Since 2013, Leekyung Kang has expanded her interest in architecture beyond two-dimensional works, experimenting with various media. One day, while encountering a redevelopment site, she became fascinated by the vertical and horizontal scaffolding structures and steel reinforcements, recognizing their unique sculptural qualities.

Her first solo exhibition, 《Circulation Construction》 (2014) at Gallery is, presented works that explored architectural imagery emerging from the processes of construction and deconstruction. Kang focused on the cyclical nature of temporary structures, such as scaffolding, which appear and disappear repeatedly, leaving behind traces and remnants.
 
She sought to capture the images formed within these repetitive construction processes—where order and disorder intertwine—and visually articulate the reciprocal relationships between their structural elements.

Kang moved beyond the conventional canvas and introduced Blueprints (2013), a work in which she reconfigured architectural blueprints found online and images from construction sites using silkscreen techniques on aluminum panels. By accumulating, repeating, and combining geometric architectural structures, she visually manifested the traces and cyclical nature of structures where order and disorder coexist. 
 
These cyclic structural images were not confined to two-dimensional representations but were also reconstructed into three-dimensional forms. This approach allowed her to more effectively convey the raw materiality and spatial perception that cannot be fully expressed within a flat surface.

Leekyung Kang focuses on incomplete and raw states that exist in our surroundings, such as construction sites. She has consistently explored the act of revealing hidden or invisible spaces within these environments. The architectural landscapes in her work feature overlapping geometric forms—cubes, grids, and rectangles—while also incorporating irregular shapes that disrupt this order. 
 
Through variations in media and working methods, Kang amplifies these structural contrasts. In Lamination of Reality (2017), she enhances the dynamism of visual imagery by folding or tilting aluminum panels, which possess reflective properties. This manipulation introduces an element of movement.

Her work has focused on the unfinished state of construction sites, navigating between order and disorder during the process of construction and deconstruction. The tension and cyclical process between these opposing forces resemble the structure of the society we live in. Society, too, is a dynamic field where systems and orders are created and disappear repeatedly through invisible forces.

With her artistic practice rooted in painting and experimental installations, she has consistently addressed surfaces that emerge from invisible spaces, which have always existed around us. Starting in 2018, she began focusing on the phenomena that occur in the gap between the physical world and the digital world.
 
This theme originates from an experience when, as usual, she was using a navigation system to find her way, and a system error caused a glitch. This experience led her to reflect on the gap between the mapped space on the screen and the physical space she was navigating.

Afterward, Leekyung Kang began creating works that visualize elements disrupting the perceptions and senses of the digital generation, who are accustomed to the connection between reality and the virtual.
 
For example, she used the screen capture function on smartphones to save and collect photo images, and then blended them with digital images through computer manipulation. The glitches and unexpected errors that occur during this process serve as devices that disturb our familiarity with the digital world.

In 2021, Leekyung Kang participated in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) residency program, where she became interested in the invisible, infinite, unknown world beneath our feet, akin to dark matter in the underground. Seeking to explore these unseen spaces in reality, the artist collaborated with experts in fields such as physics, astronomy, and geography to conduct research on the underground world.
 
The resulting works were showcased in the 《2024 Kumho Young Artist》 exhibition at the Kumho Museum of Art. The exhibition, consisting of murals, paintings, prints, and installations, presented spatial imaginations of infinite layers, based on images extracted from the research data collected during her process.

The artist’s imagination of the unknown, dark world beneath the earth aligns with Eastern philosophy and Buddhist concepts of reincarnation. Her creative process traces the byproducts, processes, and traces left behind as the imagined spaces of the earth, underground, and the in-between spaces are flipped, rearranged, fragmented, and endlessly transformed. This ongoing process reflects a constant cycle of change, where the remnants and marks of these transformations are explored.

In the artist’s recent works, the Buddhist cosmology and its cyclical structure, which were previously applied in earlier works, are expanded and reinterpreted. For instance, in the solo exhibition 《Entombed in Static》 at the Klapper Hall Gallery, Queens College, last month, the artist presented new works that visualize a cyclical transformation with no beginning or end, or the process of repetition within that cycle.
 
Furthermore, during the residency, the artist developed an interest in visualizing the space between the surface and underground, inspired by the underground spaces encountered during the program. This interest in the in-between space soon led the artist to explore ancient tombs, which exist between the earth’s surface and the underground.

Later, Leekyung Kang focused on the Dangun myth mentioned in the history of Gojoseon and the mythical figures passed down from the Three Kingdoms period, editing records of cosmic astronomy and ancient constellations to conceptualize images. The process of reimagining based on orally transmitted myths and historical-cultural information that has not been recorded is initiated through painting and drawing, where ancient religious symbols such as totems and animism are edited and reinterpreted.
 
Furthermore, the artist discovers common points between the ritual cultures and religious mythical practices of the nomadic tribes in the Eurasian and Mongolian regions and the history of Korea. She aims to reflect on the expansion of the contemporary Asian diaspora through intercontinental movement and crossing, while ultimately reconsidering the historical relationship between humans and gods.

In this way, Leekyung Kang has visually expressed the multilayered structures inherent in the invisible spaces that exist around us but are easily overlooked. Her work can be seen as an excavation of those things that are ignored and forgotten because they are invisible.
 
Starting with an ultimate curiosity about the unseen world, Kang has continued to explore the historical currents and cultural backgrounds inherent in it, offering works that allow us to view and sense the world we stand in from a new perspective.

"Why have we manifested an ultimate curiosity about the invisible world throughout history? How have things considered mythical in the modern era transformed according to the demands of their time or cultural background? What role can an artist play in society by excavating things that are ignored and forgotten because they are invisible?" (Leekyung Kang, Artist's Note)

Leekyung Kang graduated with a bachelor's degree in Western painting from Seoul National University and completed a master's degree in Western painting at the same institution's graduate school. She then earned her master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her recent solo exhibitions include 《Entombed in Static》 (Klapper Hall Gallery, Queens College, New York, 2025), 《Space on Lag》 (Graphite on Pink, Seoul, 2023), 《Missing Mass》 (U Art Space, Seoul, 2021), and 《Invented Landscape》 (West Las Vegas Library Gallery, Las Vegas, 2020).
 
Kang has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《2024 Kumho Young Artist》 (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Surviving Change》 (Charleston Heights Art Center, Las Vegas, 2023), 《Coming Home》 (Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, 2022), 《Unbound: The Altered Book》 (Chico Art Center, Chico, 2021), and more.
 
In 2021, Kang served as an assistant professor at Hope College in Michigan, and since 2024, she has been an adjunct professor at Pratt Institute. She was selected as the first Artist-in-Residence at Queens College's ‘Thomas Chen Family/Crystal Windows Endowment’ in 2024. Her works are held in the collections of various institutions, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sanford Underground Research Facility, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, and Seoul National University.

References

• 강이경, Leekyung Kang (Artist Website)
• 강이경, 아티스트 스테이트먼트 (Leekyung Kang, Artist Statement)
• 오픈갤러리, 강이경 인터뷰 (Open Gallery, Leekyung Kang Interview)
• 갤러리 이즈, 강이경 작가 노트, 2014 (Gallery IS, Leekyung Kang Artist’s Note, 2014)
• Couchin the Desert, Leekyung Kang, Invented Landscapes
• 오픈갤러리, 혼돈된 건축 (Open Gallery, Panic Architecture)
• 금호미술관, 2024 금호 영 아티스트 (Kumho Museum of Art, 2024 Kumho Young Artist)
• 아시아경제, [갤러리 산책]보이지 않는 세계, 개인과 공동체에 대한 '궁구', 2024.06.04
• 유아트스페이스, 강이경 작가 인터뷰 (U Art Space, Leekyung Kang Interview)