Kun Kang

 

▷ How did your work with the body and form begin?
My work began with my own face. When I had to remain hidden, I painted self-portraits and sculpted my own head. The human form felt like a mass created for release. Over time, that mass swelled into a body, twisting, transforming, fusing with others, and becoming animal. Reconstructing form led me to unstable states that seem ready to collapse, yet still hold the possibility of becoming something else.

 

▷ What does working with materials by hand mean to you?
I am drawn to work where “sonmat”—the trace of the hand—is visible. Kneading and pressing forms by hand gives me freedom and leads to unexpected discoveries. These findings guide where the work goes next. I believe every action, from the smallest touch to movements involving the whole body, accumulates within the sculpture.

 

 

 

 

▷ Where do your work and 《HUMAL》 meet?
Some figures are hybrids in which human and animal intermingle. Animal instinct feels pure yet precarious, while human reason resembles a shell that protects and restrains it. I have used leather, feathers, wool felt, and faux fur to hold softness and sharpness, tension and release, together. More recently, I have mixed calcium carbonate with animal glue to create surfaces as thin and fragile as a bird’s egg, exploring how an outer shell breaks, changes, and passes into another state.

 

▷ What do you hope viewers feel?
I see body and form as constantly changing rather than fixed. Within one figure, I bring softness and hardness, persistence and collapse, protection and vulnerability into motion together. I hope viewers do not immediately decide what the work represents, but look slowly at something that collapses yet holds, vanishes yet remains. Within that instability, vulnerability may reveal not extinction, but the possibility of another state, still undetermined.