Leekyung Kang
Underland, 22 x 30 inches (each), woodcut, 2020.
“I am interested in excavating color fields that I can translate from digital practice to traditional mediums.”
Leekyung Kang is an artist living and working in Pocatello, Idaho (USA). Lee’s approach to color is defined by the CMYK printing process in combination with a layered, analog process. Her printmaking and installation work is created through screenprinting, digital print, etching, relief and lithography, along with installation and video. Lee has navigated the structural framework and bone/skeleton of infrastructure in the urban landscape since 2014. By exploring the surface of spatiality such as construction sites and scaffolding structure, her work leverages architectural imagery with mixed media. Lee’s work seeks to uncover the unseen space, which is present, but never fully revealed.
Are there specific associations towards color in your work?
My work exposes the unseen and hidden spaces by capturing the raw and unfinished state of our present environment, which I define as ‘Invented landscape- In-between Space’. I would like to capture this unfinished state and challenge the conventional understanding of space, which tends to focus on its physical condition, history, and transformation. I am interested in excavating color fields that I can translate from digital practice to traditional mediums. It can be the relationship between RGB to CMYK that I can play with colors from outputs with different mediums by opacity, hue, and saturation etc. I use pigments, transparent-base, paint, color paper for printmaking, painting, and installation as well as photoshop color adjustments for digital printing.
“Printmaking has a very unique characteristic that is flatter than paint on canvas, but thicker than digital printed images. I like the physicality of layer on the paper, or any substrate that can receive the ink.”
Invented Landscape, 15 x15 inches (each), screenprint and etching, 2020.
Where do you reside between technical and intuitive in your work as an artist using color?
The work process with color for me is very interesting, because it is proceeded by both technical and intuitive decisions. While I print the images from a digital printer, the image can be varied depending on the ink cartridge, paper, received substrate, and calibration of printer etc. I am fascinated by the variety of results based on settings and mechanical process, so these are the beginning of the work to analyze colors into traditional mediums such as various kinds of ink, and paint and printmaking processes.
Artificiality in Unknown Territory and Offstage (installation view), 2018. 4'00'', single channel video.
Dazzling, 15 x 15 inches, screenprint, 2019.
How does the printmaking process itself relate to how you work with color?
The concept of my digital work is inspired by my traditional printmaking practice. Similar to printmaking, each image is layered on top of a substrate. The infinite layers of digital matrix resembles the stone used in lithography that reveals a complex layered history. Being in-between digital realms and real time, I want to translate the idea of color scheme that we are experiencing beyond the laptop monitor surface. Through this practice I uncover bizarre, creepy building structures, nearly demolished skeletal structures due to the insufficient information about certain sites, and the irregular pattern of surfaces.
Artificiality in Unknown Territory, 15 x 15 inches, screenprint, 2018
What can printmaking ink achieve regarding color in your work that no other material can?
Printmaking has a very unique characteristic that is flatter than paint on canvas, but thicker than digital printed images. I like the physicality of layer on the paper, or any substrate that can receive the ink. Depending on printmaking methods, the consistency of oil based ink creates the unique color compositions as it is harmonized with the surface of paper.