As the last exhibiton of the year 2010, Arario Beijing is proud to host the solo exhibition of Kang Hyung Koo under the title Face to Face. Renowned for his hyperrealistic renditions of famous figures, Kang will present over 20 portraits at this exhibition. Consisting of canvas works as well as aluminum panel paintings, Kang’s works offer a powerfully chilling tactile experience, illuminating on the subtlest details such as flyway pieces of hair and light wrinkles. Kang has already exhibited his work many times in Korea, as well as having held two international solo shows and a solo exhibition in New York in 2009. This exhibition in Beijing will be a prelude to the artist’s solo show being held at The Singapore Art Museum in October, 2011.

It's a difficult task for a contemporary artist to deal with the genre of painting, which is already burdened with an extreme history that includes both its death and birth. As if to have accepted his destiny as a painter, however, Kang continues painting portraitures on large canvases - a subject in painting that in today’s context seems banal and uninteresting. Kang creates close-up depictions of famous icons of their own generation, such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, and Einstein. Such hyperrealistic rendering is possible as he rejects the traditional painting tool of the brush, and favors airbrush, grinder, nails, drill, q-tips, toothpicks and other inventive mediums. The figures seem as real as photographs, yet they are not projected a photograph on the canvas and not transferred from a photograph neither; rather, their expressions are synthesized and reinvented from the artist's imagination based on the collected information on the figures through books and DVDs. This is what stands Kang’s works apart: as if to silence the voices that predicted the death of painting in this day and age of reproduction, his works are complete 'paintings' that have been born through the hands of a fine artist.

Kang’s works inevitably suggest Hyperrealism, but this is just an approach the artist employs to deliver his intention through his work. The intention behind his oeuvre is actually situated on the opposite end of the spectrum from the theories and concepts of Hyperrealism. Unlike Hyperrealism, which rejects feelings and emphasizes cold external qualities, the artist focuses on the profound internal depth of his subjects. Thus, his painstaking work focuses particularly on the expression of the eyes. One feels a certain aura that Hyperrealism tried so hard to eliminate, when looking at the eye the size of a human face that has been magnified through absolute craftsmanship on a colossal canvas measuring over 2 meters. Through confronting the massive face, the artist demands a conversation or mutual responding between the audience and the figures in the painting rather than a unilateral meditation of his work.

In such way, the artist pursues a direct face-to-face contact between the figures in the work and the audience. Paradoxically, the audience comes to attempt at communication with the internal world of the figures through their eyes that are so realistic that they seem like nothing but objects. The audience also comes to question whether the 'actual' figures universally known as popular icons, are ‘illusions’ created through the imagination of the artist, and if their widely-known expressions have been 'fabricated' for the media. At first encounter, the perception of the whole image of the figures in the gigantic canvases offers a majestic and sublime experience. As the viewer nears the work, however, one starts to see strands of hair, dry surface of wrinkled skin, and even pupils of their eyes, and suddenly the colossal visual impression of the work is transformed into a chilling and uncomfortable tactile experience. The viewer encounters the middle between visual sense and tactile sense.

Kang Hyung Koo is a highly respected artist for his relentless fine artist spirit that accepts the painstaking labor as the destiny of his own, even in this contemporary art world where the death of the artist is commonly debated. The gallery’s intention through this exhibition is the same as the artist's: for everyone to be able to communicate with works of outstanding craftsmanship.