Poster image of 《Cast》 ©Amado Art Space
Amado Art Space is presenting 《Cast》, the solo exhibition of Dongju Kang,
winner of the 2nd Amado Artist Prize, on view through September 7.
Dongju Kang captures fleeting, easily overlooked scenes,
transposing them into black-and-white surfaces using light and shadow as molds.
She repeatedly observes and senses subjects that embody the passage of space
and time. Through processes akin to indirect frottage or printmaking, she
conducts acts of transcription—pressing material surfaces against time-worn
subjects to imprint their texture and temporality.
As previously likened to literary transcription, the artist’s
methodology is a performative gesture: one that senses space-time through the
site of her body and the temporality of her acts of inscription. In 《Cast》, the kinds of
time and space the artist “passes through” remain consistent.
This time, the work also engages with spaces that we cannot
directly encounter—such as the surface of the moon, meteor showers, and
galaxies—spaces that arrive to us through light and darkness, having traversed
distances that are almost impossible to imagine. These scenes, arrived at
through a long desire to gaze beyond the visible realm and into distant
space-time, are also watched over by the artist, who then transcribes them into
the space-time of her own body.
Yet now,
another dimension enters the act of transcription—an external space-time that
intervenes in the artist’s bodily engagement. The material evidence of this
intrusion is found in the series of blue images. These are made using
cyanotype, an early photographic printing technique. The artist aligns the act
of transference with the process by which the revelation of an image is
inevitably determined by light and darkness, time and space.
In the
cyanotype process, the image’s brightness and depth of shadow are determined by
the intensity and duration of light exposure. When the day is dim, the
resulting imprint becomes paler (whiter); in strong light, it appears darker
(bluer).
The same
applies when the ambient lighting shifts due to the changing season or the
movement of objects within the space. Such interruptions too leave behind
traces—blue or white. In this way, what were once mere subjects or
conditions—light and darkness, day and night, seasons and spacetime—now come to
shape themselves.
