Kang Hong-Goo was born on an island in Sinan, Jeollanam-do. He graduated from Mokpo National University of Education. He taught at an elementary school on an island for six years before returning to school to study painting at Hongik University, where he also completed his graduate degree. He currently lives in Seoul and has served as the director of the Goeun Museum of Photography.
SAVINA
Museum of Art presents 《Uninhabited
Island & Inhabited Island – Shinan Sea II》 as its
first curated exhibition of 2023. Kang Hong-Goo is a first-generation Korean
digital photography artist who has continuously explored the expansion of
experimental aesthetics through the use and transformation of photographic
media—engaging in digital photo compositing, painting over photographs,
layering drawn forms, and transforming photographic images through painterly
composition.
This
exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of the results of the artist’s
exploration over 17 years, beginning in 2005 when he entered middle age,
traveling back and forth to his hometown Shinan, where he was born and raised
on Eouido Island in Shinan County, Jeollanam-do. Shinan is composed of 1,025
islands, of which 72 are inhabited and 953 are uninhabited.
The
exhibition features a total of 78 works, including photographs capturing
landscapes of life and death discovered on Shinan’s inhabited and uninhabited
islands; composite photographs where memories of disappearing things
intermingle with fantasy; paintings completed by hanging collected objects
washed ashore by waves; a collage approximately 14 meters in length created by
connecting and stitching together 26 works with thread; and video works
documenting the landscape of Manjaedo Island and the sound of its waves.
