DOOSAN Gallery Seoul is pleased to present 《The Night Before》, a solo exhibition by Dongju Kang, from September 2nd to October 3rd, 2015, in Seoul. Kang won the 5th DOOSAN Artist Award in 2014, and her work documents urban landscapes with paper and carbon paper.

Kang wanders through different parts of the city, capturing the subtle changes in the urban landscape at night. Instead of working during the day when everything is in sharp focus, Kang chooses to work at night in order to reserve the visual elements and manifest the senses that are not easily expressed. On paper on top of carbon paper, Kang documents how the dim lights of the night change with time and space.

Carbon paper is an excellent material through which to transfer the image and sensibility of the night onto the paper. While drawing on paper portrays light with black pencil lines, drawing on paper with carbon paper beneath it captures light through the absence of lines. Just as only a small amount of light is required to illuminate the surrounding in the darkness of the night, Kang’s carbon paper drawings are left with dim traces that are indecipherable at first.

For the exhibition The Night Before, Kang presents drawings that capture her movement, from leaving her home, roaming around in spontaneous routes, and returning home. She photographed what she saw during her journeys, stopping every 100 steps and capturing the surface of the ground on the paper. In the works Light Drawing and Ground Drawing, three different journeys with same point of departure and arrival document the landscape of light and the city.

The accumulation of time is evident in Light Drawing, in which the artist drew images of her stopped moment on paper using different carbon paper each time her stopped. The three drawings made with 18, 36 and 38 sheets of carbon paper capture three different journeys and times, and portray the night landscape in different concentrations In Ground Drawing, in the same manner, the texture of the ground is transferred onto paper with gaps filled in with pencil every 18, 36 and 38 times the artist stops her movement, and documents time that’s paused but not stopped.

Kang’s drawings continue on for a long time according to the changes in time and space, and demand from the viewer the time to experience her work. Just as a certain period of time is needed in order to recognize subjects in the dark, Kang’s drawings gradually expose the changes of time in spaces that are at first indecipherable.

References

• 《전야 (The Night Before)》