Contents

Part 1: Painting seeks the nature of things
) As seen in his paintings like Woman, Girl, and On an Autumn Day, Kang who had been involved in semi-abstract work since studying in Japan portrayed figures in the expressionist and fauvist style in the early 1940s and depicted landscapes in meandering thick lines. As the art critic Oh Kwang-soo mentioned that “He seemed profoundly inspired and moved by the fauvists’ atypical, audacious mode in his early period,”5) his work Spring6) represents his inspiration in improvisatory brushwork, thereby demonstrating an atypical scene without form. “Although the painter probably came across Art Informel in the late 1950s, he has already reached the height of this style.”7) said Kim In-hwan referring to Spring. His paintings that show a variety of forms ranging from a mixture of figurative and abstract images and expressionist semi-abstract images to atypical images such as the action painting-like work Celebration (1950) he worked on for 10 years from the period of his study in Japan suggest that Kang’s abstract art and its realization has repeatedly gone through change and expansion.
Part 2 From archetype to original Form, from original form to indeterminate form
Kang Yong-un tried to proceed to infinity, consistently breaking away from any formal frame. Art was all to him who trod its path “from archetype to original form, original form to indeterminate form.” He didn’t give a thought to belonging to any school of painting or leading any art movement with his fellow artists. Kang Yong-un exhibited his works for the first time at the 2nd Contemporary Artist Invitational Exhibition, and kept attending up to the 13th exhibition with his greatly inspired creative will. He remembered that artworks displayed at the exhibition had been created in naturally rendered brushwork and by spilling, scattering, and dripping paints. An example is his entry to the 5th exhibition Work 1 for which Kang made an experimental attempt to use laminated paper. Work 1 was made by applying linseed oil to laminated paper put on the floor on which he dripped turpentine mixed with oil paint. What conspicuously appears in this work is a chance effect where paint infiltrates and spreads as its physical property. Congealed paints on the base of the laminated paper’s brown tone resulted in unpredictable formless space and time.

Part 3 Form is the line drawn by human unconsciousness
Kang, who has said, “Form is the line drawn by human unconsciousness,” seemed to consider that informalist painting would be indefinite unless the universe does not die away. The elements transcending time and space or flowing in a natural space such as energy, pulsation, resonance, and spirit have been naturally and repeatedly adopted as discourses on or titles of his pieces. Lines twist and turn, bring about geometric abstraction when they cross, flow or halt, or appear as amorphous protoplasm. Such a line is Kang Yong-un himself walking through the space of an infinite amount of time. In Revival (1996) the scene is divided geometrically where black lines meet colored lines while Memory (1999) has a composition in which the scene is also divided by lines. These pieces are classified as works of geometric abstraction by some critics, but I think it is more meaningful to interpret them as an intersection of lines rendered by Kang’s inner inspiration.