Kang Seung Lee's solo exhibition 《Kang Seung Lee: The Heart of A Hand》 will be on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum from March 25 to July 22. 

In this exhibition, the artist honors the work of a pioneering choreographer Goh Choo San (1948-1987) and explores his life from various perspectives. Lee first presented drawings and video works on Goh Choo San in his solo exhibition 《Briefly Gorgeous》 at Gallery Hyundai in 2021. Since then, Lee has developed The Heart of A Hand by constantly researching and investigating Goh's life and legacy and also interviewing his family members as well as other key figures.  

Goh Choo San, born in Singapore, worked extensively in Asia, Europe, and North America and died in 1987 at the age of 39 of an AIDS-related illness. He was the resident choreographer and artistic director of the Washington Ballet from 1976 to 1987. He collaborated with prominent ballet companies, including American Ballet Theater, Houston Ballet, and the Joffrey Ballet. Still, his work and legacy remain primarily absent from cultural, art, and queer histories. This absence is due to his diasporic identity, the fact that he was active during when there were no Asian dancers and choreographers in Western ballet, and that many of his queer colleagues and Goh himself died during the AIDS epidemic. 

The exhibition will feature a number of new works. A series of drawings on goatskin parchment memorialize the relationships with Goh's loved ones, including his late partner H. Robert Magee, who died of AIDS, his friend and ballet master Janek Schergen, now the artistic director of Singaporean Ballet, and his sister Goh Soo Kim, a ballet dancer and founder of Singaporean Ballet, while also offering the new lens to reflect on the historical and bodily erasure of Goh’s life. Through the gold thread embroidery on sambe, Lee honors the forgotten and preserved memories in the aftermath of personal and community tragedy.  

The central component of this exhibition is a single-channel video work entitled The Heart of A Hand. The video installation, created in collaboration with Filipino transgender/non-binary choreographer Joshua Serafin and filmmaker Nathan Mercury Kim, presents a "queer futurity" imaginable through transnational inheritance and intergenerational memories. Based on Goh's 1981 choreography Configurations, commissioned by American Ballet Theatre and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Brussels-based Joshua Serafin honors Goh's life and legacy and presents a spectrum of emotional and physical states while deconstructing his choreography to create a futuristic queer image. KIRARA, a transgender composer and musician based in Seoul, was inspired by Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op.38 (the score for Goh's ‘Configurations’) to create a revitalized soundtrack as a testament to queer life and the individual lives lived.

References

• 갤러리 현대 (Gallery Hyundai)