Kang Jun Seok was born in 1984 in Busan, South Korea. In 2014, he moved to Jeju Island, a beautiful southern island of Korea and discovered a landscape in reality which perfectly matched his imaginary ideals. Since then, Jeju Island has become one of his significant sources of inspiration. Kang uses the island as the groundwork of his own utopia, he reconstructs the surroundings to create a land of his own and invented an alternative world that allows the audience to liberate from the burden and frustration in real life.
His style of painting is characterised by combining calmly toned colours and gentle brush stroke on canvas, which makes his works dreamlike and as well as creating unique surface textures of his imaginary world. Apart from heavily applying the elements of nature and landscape, his paintings also include mysterious childlike/animal characters which is also the focal point of this exhibition. Often in the paintings, these characters carry various personal objects that are symbols of childhood. The characters, although with children’s body and big eyes, it also proposes the audience to recall how they spend time in the past comparing to how they spend time now.
Through their eyes, Kang is arousing a weighty question about our life and value in a beautiful and peaceful way. Kang speaks a social aspect in our time that we try to keep inner peace amid the pain of reality in his canvas. Walking in the woods, sky, and lakeside along with the characters in the paintings, we will live another day holding a silver lining in our hearts.
“Rather than being Peter Pan hid in Neverland, it is closer to be a baby Nietzsche who discovered something important inside, rising above the worldly values.”