Tina Kim Gallery is delighted to announce Kang Seok Ho (1971-2021) as the latest addition to our gallery roster. Kang Seok Ho's innovative paintings mark a bold endeavor to explore and redefine the boundaries and structure inherent in the realm of painting. Tina Kim, founder and principal of Tina Kim Gallery states regarding the artist: "Kang Seok Ho is a consequential figure in the history of contemporary Korean painting. Returning to Korea in the early 2000s after being abroad in Germany, he continued to paint, even when the critical discourse was centered on multimedia and conceptual art. His contemporaries include Park Chan-Kyong, Chung Seoyoung, Haegue Yang, and Minouk Lim, all working in different media. However, he surrounded himself with painters, often organizing exhibitions, to remedy the lack of context and opportunities available for Korean painters during that time. I am excited to continue making research and exhibiting Korean painters who came of age during the early aughts, who largely went unnoticed but were nonetheless prolific and pushed the boundary of painting forward.”
At the heart of Kang's oeuvre are his paintings of torsos, emblematic of his distinctive creative process and style. He developed these by first cropping snapshots that he took of people on the street. These images became his signature portraits of anonymous subjects, revealing his investigation on seeing that he investigated through painting's surface. Bypassing narrative, Kang's inquiry delves into formal details such as color, pattern, and texture, aligning more with abstraction than photorealism. This added layer reflects Kang's penchant for traditional Asian landscape painting.
Kang Seok Ho received his Bachelor of Fine Art in sculpture at Seoul National University, then left for Germany to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he received his Masters of Fine Art in painting. After winning the UBS Art Award in Basel, Switzerland in 2000, he returned to Korea and won the Seoknam Art Prize (Seoul, Korea) in 2004, and he was the selected artist for "2008 Young Korean Artist: I AM AN ARTIST" by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. From 2003 to 2020, he held 16 solo exhibitions and organized a number of exhibitions. He served as a professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology from 2018 to 2021. His first retrospective exhibition Kang Seok Ho: Three Minute Delight (2022-2023) was held at Seoul Museum of Art, as well as his first New York solo exhibition Deep is the Rising Sun, Far is the Falling One (2023) at Tina Kim Gallery.
