The art of Young-Suk Kang

It is difficult to represent what the work of painting in Asia can be. Matsuo Toschio spends 30 years to paint peonies. The calligrapher seeks all his life to seize the world in only one feature of brush. With the time such constancy and such humility in this search seem to us definitively foreign. This painting is a search for oneself.

Young-Suk KANG makes studies of Eastern art at the University of Seoul. Then devotes herself to creation as a recluse. She exposes from 1985 to 1993 in South Korea.
Its style, typically Eastern, is called "Kachofugetsu": "flower, bird, wind and the moon", they are the four broad topics of Chinese painting. This style was with its apogee under the dynasty of Song.
Frequently, she makes a return to the bases of Asian painting, with the representation of what is called "The four gentlemen" (Sa Kun Ja), a fundamental spiritual exercise. These four pillars of wisdom are allotted to four plants: the plum tree, the orchid, the chrysanthemum and the bamboo (Mé Nan Kuk Juk), each one symbolise an essential virtue of the world.

The three elements which compose the art of Young-Suk KANG are the stroke, the point and the vacuum. The technique of the "water puddle" and the dissolve are largely used. The "white" is a great part in the composition of the work. The movement seized by the brush is essential, the whole having to form a balance, founded on a contemplated spontaneousness, which can be destroyed by almost nothing. Chinese ink does not suffer, contrary to oil, repentance or hesitation.