In Between the Real and the Image: Investigation of the Transcendental Realm via the Negation of Reality
Yoon Jin Sup (Art Critic)
 
Ⅰ.
Kim Kang-Yong begins his paintings by evenly applying the sifted sand mixed with an adhesive onto the canvas. This is the first step to creating his brick paintings. For Kim who has devoted approximately 40 years of his life to painting bricks, bricks are now a lens through which he sees the world, and a measure by which he relates to humans, objects, and events. He was not like this from the beginning, but has become accustomed by spending more than 40 years of his life with bricks. Like the old saying "a drop hollows the stone", his "attitude held its course” and brought about such a conclusion. Thus, the artist says, “everything is fused in the painting.”
What Kim had said means no different than the universe is contained in his works. How can the whole universe be contained in a mere painting of bricks? It is possible because Kim Kang-Yong does not paint “objects”, but “spirit”. In other words, he paints the “form” of a brick, an image risen from one’s mind, rather than a brick as a figurative object. This is why there are no real bricks in Kim’s studio.
If one is to compare this to Plato’s idea of true form, Kim’s image of a brick is closer to the idea of a brick. In Republic, Plato demonstrates his theory of idea through the metaphor of the beds. The bed painted by an artist is only an imitation that is three stages away from the truth, the ideal form. The bed built by a carpenter and the one we can actually use in the phenomenal world is also an imitation, which is two stages away from the ideal form. However, as an artist imitated such a bed, it is that much far from the truth. In conclusion, Plato argues that artists like poets who only disseminate lies need to be banished from the republic. This is the essence of Plato’s “poet-abolition theory.”
What is then, the nature of the bricks that Kim Kang-Yong paints? Kim’s painting is a “hyper” painting, which has transcended an artist’s imitation of a real brick. In a way, it is the result of self-negation. It is a struggle to overcome the painting of a brick--an imitation three stages far from the ideal brick--and a return to the world of the idea, the true form. In this circumstance, the long, 40 years of Kim’s practice that owed to bricks (hyperrealism) and existed for bricks (the present) is a convincing argument, itself.
Kim Kang-Yong has walked a difficult path of seeking the truth by only using bricks, a common material, as his subject for more than 40 years. The body is a crucial means to such a path. That is perhaps why some say Buddhist monks who practice Zen and artists reach the same results although their process and objectives may have been different. This also applies to all the nameless carpenters and potters as well. Anyone who reaches an ultimate stage of some sort via the agency of one’s own body, sees the world through the path one has honed. In this way, Kim’s statement mentioned earlier--“everything is fused in the painting”--is more relatable.
Ⅱ.
When Kim Kang-Yong was captivated by the hyperrealist trend in the mid-70’s, he was preoccupied with realistically depicting how bricks externally appear. In other words, he wanted the bricks to be shown as bricks themselves. Were those really bricks, though? A viewer seeing his works in an exhibition at the time would have said, “the paintings are astonishingly identical to the bricks!”
Influenced by photorealism, or hyperrealism that was prevalent in the US during the mid-1960’s, similar tendencies of hyperrealism was popular in Korea during the mid-70’s. I say “of hyperrealism” here, because Korean hyperrealism at the time was not the same as American hyperrealism, or the kind of harsh and objective depiction that Richard Estes (1932-) would use in his paintings of cityscapes. I see many matured photorealist artists now, but in the 70’s, the so-called hyperrealists did not reach the same level of extreme delineation with that of Americans. It may have been due to the limits of technique, but also the fundamental difference in perspective.
There was a construction boom in Korean society at the time, as a continuation of the 5-Year Economic Development Plan, which began in the early 1960’s. Industrial complexes were built in areas like Changwon, Yeosu, Incheon, and Guro; Gyeongbu Expressway was inaugurated, and apartment complexes were constructed in major cities including Seoul.
Korean hyperrealism was born out of such a societal background. It is also when paintings such as Koh Younghoon’s stones, Ju Taeseok’s railroads, Ji Seokcheol’s cushion, and Cho Sang-hyun’ construction safety panels were shown in large-scale exhibitions like Salon des Indépendants and Seoul Contemporary Art Festival. As time went by, bricks slowly became Kim Kang-Yong’s trademark. The artist group “Truth and Reality” founded in 1978 collectively attempted to comment on reality via hyperrealism, and Kim Kang-Yong was also active as a member. 
Ⅲ.
Although Kim Kang-Yong is regarded as one of the representative hyperrealists in the history of Korean contemporary art, he is in fact no longer a hyperrealist artist. This is why I gave a brief introduction to Korean hyperrealism earlier in the text. Kim had started as a hyperrealist, but has now reached a “level” that is beyond hyperrealism after long years of training. That “level” is the world, which stemmed from reality but that has also transcended it. To examine the grounds on which this came about, I would like to cite the following text. 
“Kim Kang-Yong’s work is still read in relation to bricks due to its materiality of sand and physical resemblance to rectangular cuboid. This is the result of our association based on experience. However, as one can see in Kim’s recent works, the inconsistent viewpoints and paradoxical logic in the scale of the bricks reveal that the images are far from the realistic circumstances or the physical nature of real bricks. Application of the multiple perspectives rather than the one-point perspective system, all the randomly-sized bricks, the immaculate appearance of the bricks, the side view of the bricks depicted on the thick edges of the canvas, etc. tell us that Kim’s works are not dealing with bricks as an object of imitation, but, as a matter of fact, are creating an image of idealized bricks.
Such are the evidences, which prove Kim Kang-Yong is comprehending the images of bricks as an element of the painting’s composition. They do not have their roots in reality, but in fact have transcended reality. The variation in the images of bricks Kim is the outcome of his effort to provide a sculptural order onto the painting’s surface. As he composes the paintings with various formal properties such as rhythm, balance, harmony, symmetry, accents, and irregularity, the viewers are granted with aesthetic pleasure.”
-윤진섭, <‘보는 것’과 ‘보이는 것’에 대한 회화적 질문>, 2002년 박여숙갤러리 전시서문-
-Yoon Jin Sup, “The Painterly Question of ‘Seeing’ and the ‘Visible’”, preface to the exhibition at Park Ryu Sook Gallery, 2002-
 
Ⅳ.
Looking at Kim Kang-Yong’s paintings make me think that his works are close to the ideal form of a brick. To be more exact, they are in the process of getting closer to the ideal form of a brick. In Aristotle’s terms, the works are in the state of “dynamis (potential form)”, in which the materials are beginning to bear the form to approach “entelecheia (complete form).” Every brick is born out of extensive, skilled labor including covering and painting with sand. Furthermore, the artist’s long-term research and sculptural experimentations have demonstrated through the optical illusion, the harmony, and the multiple perspectives in different combinations of individual bricks. Ultimately, Kim’s work is becoming an abstract painting in the process of reaching a brick’s ideal form. A viewer may also feel like one is looking at a geometric abstraction, rather than a representation. In particular, Kim’s recent works in shades of white have an impactful alienation effect that is almost surreal. The effect is similar to the idiosyncrasy of Japanese Butoh dancer’s white face make-up. Like the Butoh dancers painting their faces white to create an unreal effect, Kim’s usage of the colors red, blue, yellow, white, etc. produces a surreal alienation effect. And the effect is also deeply related to the “ideal painting” or the abstract painting they form.
The reason Kim’s paintings look illogical is due to the optical illusion induced by using light and shadow. At a glance, his paintings look realistic, but one can soon realize they are highly manipulated, especially once one carefully observes the shadows. Generally, the length of shadows vary depending on the distance of the light source; however, the bricks’ shadows in the paintings remain constant in their area and length. The multiple perspectives can be found in such optical illusions. Instead of the one-point perspective used in Western-style paintings, Kim uses the multiple perspective technique used in Chaekgeori screen paintings during the late Joseon dynasty.
Optical illusions also exist in the column works, on which four sides bricks are painted. The bricks look three-dimensional, but they are painted on a flat surface. The antinomy derived in between existence and illusion is also related to the idea of “self-identification of a plane” or the “proof of self-identification of a plane”, which were often discussed in Dansaekhwa and Conceptual Art movements in the 1970’s. These terms, often used together with the concept of Wittgenstein’s tautology in the art world, signify perplexity towards the logical conclusion on the surface of the canvas after the shadows are removed. Flat planes are eventually revealed when shadows are removed from a seemingly three-dimensional image. The relationship between real existence and image, or in other words, the relationship of illusions was what “self-identification of a plane” or the “proof of self-identification of a plane” was referring to. If so, Kim Kang-Yong’s brick paintings exist within this category and they are also a formal exploration of this category from multiple angles.
Kim Kang-Yong’s sincerity and effort he exerts into his main medium, sand, are extraordinary. His studio is filled with not only sand from Korea, but also with various kinds that he has collected from all over the world. As an expert, he uses appropriate types of sand, in appropriate parts of the work. Kim had explained that there is a difference between the sand from the east coast and that from the west coast of Korea. Sand from the east coast is more transparent, whereas the sand from the west coast is more murky. Kim distinguishes different sands to produce discrete effects.
What sand signifies for Kim Kang-Yong is crucial. He considers sand as the most basic unit of a formative element. It is an analogy to the “point” in the three basic elements of form: point, line, and surface. Points with regular direction become a line, lines become a surface, and surfaces become a three-dimensional structure; Kim compares these transformative processes to that of society. For him, it is similar to how individual-family-society-state structure in this order develops. Just like how a rational bureaucratic system operates during such a process, he manages the painting’s surface by different combinations of bricks. This idea and management technique compose diverse sculptural experimentations to the extent the artist's imagination allows, or to borrow Kant’s terminology, according to the imagination of free play. As if he is proving this, Kim Kang-Yong has continuously experimented with sand since the 1970’s. Beginning with his early works that portray bricks with sand, and the Reality + Image series in the 80’s that describe the process of widely applying sand with trowel, and to the works after the 90’s that paint fragmented bricks--Kim’s brick walls varied from an orderly system to disarray. It took Kim endless trial and errors to attempt all the diverse transformations.
Naturally, this process of experimentation was accompanied by not only testing out different colors and forms from monochrome to multichromatic, but also with the evolution of materials used. Sometimes using one kind of sand, and at times mixing different sand in texture, size, and color on one canvas, Kim put his tests into practice.
Ⅴ.
One of the biggest misunderstandings about Kim Kang-Yong’s works is related to the question of why his works never change. However, the misconception is a shallow judgment based on the impression a brick, the sole subject matter, gives. From my point of view, his works have always gone through gradual changes on the contrary, and they are full of variations. In this way, his work is the “art of process”, which always evolves and changes, as well as the “performance of a body”, which takes copious amounts of time to produce the work. In other words, “one’s hips have to be heavy.”
Varied experiments were conducted in the midst of rigorous processes just like the artist himself. Experiments included cautious implementation of colors in shifting away from monochrome, and then the return to monochrome, as well as a column-like cube form in between the color tests. Since three years ago, he has been painting on white sand to make the painting look more white overall. And even within this work he is testing out different variations as follows: the mixture of white and other colors, the application of checkered pattern, which reminds one of a chessboard, and the repetitive sequencing of the same pattern to create a rhythmical image. 
Developed with bricks as the leitmotif, Kim Kang-Yong’s rigorous experiments ultimately engage with the basic questions of what is a painting, what and why do painters paint. And as Kim’s paintings encompass existential, phenomenological, and epistemological issues, his act of painting simultaneously contains the question of philosophical and ethical, and eventually the practice of life as an attitude. In short, it is about the devoted practice of life.
Like the monk facing a wall in practicing Zen, and every thought intruding the mind during the beginning of meditation, Kim Kang-Yong had experienced plenty of formal agitation in between an object’s reality and image. Thus, his experiments and attempts for about 40 years is a fight with image tricks that concern virtual images. And that endless battle is a grand epic about the visual antinomy derived from reality and image.
However, there is a large possibility that the narrative will also be an illusion. Like the Zen practice, which tries to find the true self in the midst of illusions, the medium of painting, despite the long-standing history, is also lost like the character in the Minotaurs’ labyrinth. Where really is the image? Is it somewhere external, or is it within our minds? Kim Kang-Yong’s work seems to be one step in searching for the answers to these fundamental questions.