Kim Sookang creates lyrical gum-print still lifes from objects encountered in her daily life. More akin to painting than to photography, Sookang's creative process involves laying multiple coats of pigment onto photographic paper using a single monochrome negative. The artist then carefully brushes the color, thinning it out in certain places and removing it completely from others, thus creating fine texture and accentuating shades. The accumulation of translucent layers gives "body" to each print; with each subsequent layer, the images gradually come into being. Each exposure mediates, as it were, an additional trace of the subject.
The images in Sookang's Inner Wear series all depict a wire hanger on which she placed a piece of her own undergarments. The items exhibit the creases and fine stretch marks of garments worn over a period of time, which have begun to respond to the physical characteristics of their wearer.
The harshness of the direct, in-your-face, depiction of intimate objects contrasts with the delicate beauty of the garments and the fine translucent tonality of the prints. As viewers behold one image after another, a subtly erotic element emerges - one which does not exist in any single image. Like the photographic print arising from the multiple layers of sediment, so the image of the person behind the work comes gradually into being, and brings with it a powerful sense of privacy - and an equally powerful sense of the violation of that privacy. |
