SEOUL, b. unknown

KANG Cheolgyu (b.1990) depicts narratives of a fictional world with a realistic touch. The mysterious otherworld within his canvas is a landscape that metaphorically projects his own reality. People and animals in exotic nature, symbolic events, each are closely related to his emotions and psyche. The black sphere that appears in Enemy (2023) represents a physical manifestation of complex emotions that are difficult to handle, such as anxiety, compulsion, expectation, delusion, disappointment, and depression. The artist's reality is sometimes perceived as overwhelmingly helpless, like the Big One (2023), which remains unflinching even when struck by a decisive spear. In Hunting Diary (2023), a figure who prepares raw meat from the wild for survival is depicted as an incompletely segmented body or self-divided into several people. KANG Cheolgyu was born in Gimcheon, Korea in 1990. He received his BFA in Painting and MFA in Fine Arts from Hannam University. He has held solo exhibitions at Chapter II (Seoul, Korea, 2022), M2 Project-room at Lee Ungno Museum (Daejeon, Korea, 2021), Artist Residency TEMI (Daejeon, Korea, 2020), Gallery Gabi (Seoul, Korea, 2017) and more. He has participated in group exhibitions at ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2024), Doonamjae Art Center (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Gallery Baton (Seoul, Korea, 2022), Daejeon Museum of Art (Daejeon, Korea, 2021; 2018), Galley Gabi (Seoul, Korea, 2017), Gallery Gwang, Sejong Center (Seoul, Korea, 2015) and more. He was the artist-in-residence at the Artist Residency TEMI (Daejeon, Korea) in 2020 and the Studio White Block (Cheonan, Korea) in 2023. His works are collected by institutions such as Seoul Museum of Art, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Art Bank, Daejeon Museum of Art.