Kang Seok Ho (1971–2021) developed a singular painterly language grounded in close observation, material sensitivity, and a devotion to the surface of the canvas at a time when Korean contemporary art was increasingly oriented toward conceptual and multimedia practices. Trained in both sculpture and painting, Kang approached the human figure as a site for formal experimentation rather than narrative depiction. While inspired by the Old Masters—admiring Western painters’ treatment of color and light and the East Asian landscape tradition’s emphasis on subject interpretation—his technique remained entirely his own. Working on linen carefully primed to preserve its weave, he applied thinned oil paint in delicate, uniform layers using a distinctive tapping technique, allowing pigment to settle into a textured, luminous surface.

Across his practice, Kang treated bodies as topographical forms: fragments of skin, folds, and shadows transformed through cropping, enlargement, and reframing into quiet, tactile fields that hover between figuration and abstraction. He often worked from photographs—his own or sourced from media—first in the Get Up series, which focused on clothed torsos, backs, and buttocks. Its abstracted details enabled him to explore intimacy and rhythm in ordinary forms—a method he carried into the Couple and Nude series to magnify and transform intimate details.

In the Couple series, begun in the mid-2010s, Kang further explores his interest in the relationship between forms sharing a single canvas. Using closely cropped imagery, he focused on moments where two faces, hands, or bodies meet, overlap, or nearly merge, reducing the markers of individuality and emphasizing instead the fragile points of contact between two beings. Enlarged eyes and adjoining profiles often occupy the canvas with frontal directness, producing an impassive, almost confrontational gaze that reflects Kang’s ongoing inquiry into the act of seeing. These works are less depictions of romantic pairs than studies of equilibrium and tension—two bodies negotiating proximity, resemblance, and spatial balance. In this untitled work featuring recognizable public figures Prince William and Kate Middleton, Kang’s approach remains formal rather than narrative, directing attention to contour, texture, and proximity while maintaining the subtle anonymity. By dissolving narrative cues, Kang transforms the couple into a single, shifting form, encouraging viewers to linger on the material and perceptual thresholds.