Spirit of Welkin

Hyun Ae Kang (1959) is a famous contemporary artist, a follower of the South Korean artistic movement dansaekhwa or "monochrome painting", whose representatives were distinguished by the multi-layered texture of artistic works and the approach to creating works as a spiritual practice. Lives and works in California, USA.

Unlike its predecessors, Hyun Ae Kang moves away from monochrome, but continues to create abstract paintings, applying thick, confident strokes of paint on the canvas layer by layer, giving the surface a characteristic dansaekhwa texture. 

Being a deeply religious person, Kang spends many hours in prayer before and during the creation of the painting, which is reflected in the abstractions themselves, which achieve a powerful visual effect due to such a long and persistent ecstatic experience that accompanies the work on the picture. Again and again reinterpreting sacred texts and layer by layer inscribing hieroglyphs with biblical quotations in her works, the artist achieves an amazing effect – an inexplicable sense of the presence of the sacred arises from the paintings, regardless of the faith of the viewer. Entering a state of flow, Kang pours seraphic messages from The Supreme on canvases in bright colors, trying to convey the received spiritual experience to the viewer through her works.

Hyun Ae Kang's works are in public and private collections around the world, including the Art Museum of Seoul, the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center in Anaheim, California, and the Brea Museum and Historical Society, California. Kang's work will also be featured in an upcoming retrospective at the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center in Anaheim in 2021. The exhibition will be the first retrospective of the artist in the United States and will feature works from the early period in South Korea, as well as her most current projects.