Artist
Soon Yul Kang
Soon Yul is concerned with time, healing, and meditation and is influenced by traditional Korean cultural elements. She uses calligraphy and paper collage as my medium and is also influenced by the Zen understanding of simplicity, stillness, repetition, and rebirth and by the Eastern philosophy of Yin-Yang which teaches the balance and harmony of nature and of the universe. According to the theory of Yin-Yang, all things are said to have two opposing but complementary and cooperative aspects: dark and bright, shadow and light, black and white, invisible and visible, emptying and filling, square and circle, etc.
WE 1, 2021, 410 x 430 mm, Calligraphy on archival paper
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WE 2, 2021, 410 x 430 mm, Calligraphy on archival paper
During the time of the pandemic, she has been dwelling on how humans relate to their surroundings and how people relate to each other, to animals and to nature. She has been reflecting on the emotional and physical distancing that people employ and the issue of insider or outsider or in-betweener that people practice in belonging communities. These thoughts have motivated her to create handwriting calligraphy works.
For the entitled ‘WE’ series, she calligraphed the Korean word of 람[salam]: Human Being repeatedly on western papers. Soon Yul uses the traditional way to make ink for these calligraphy works. Calligraphy in Korea is a visual art reflecting the Korean tradition of artistic writing. The working process is very slow but meditative and this is just as important as the result.