The Desire to be Desired: JooLee Kang
Here, Now, and Our Stories Drawn with a Pen
Text by Boseul Shin
Translated by Gallery Chosun
Illustration
Scribble, scribble.
Looking at JooLee Kang’s drawings, these sounds come to mind.
As the pen glides across the paper,
butterflies and dragonflies, bright flowers, and animals gradually fill the page.
One step closer. I hold my breath as I approach the drawing.
If I make any noise, it feels as if the butterflies might take flight, so I tread carefully.
The little creature that looks like a grasshopper or a cricket seems ready to dart behind the page at any moment.
Black, blue, red. Drawn in simple colours,
yet the animals feel alive, the flowers radiant.
Anyone would call JooLee Kang’s work a “still life.”
A still life full of flowers, animals and insects.
Her work is approachable.
It feels like a lovely picture that could fit perfectly in any living room.
It even feels decorative.
Yet in today’s world, why still a still life?
But Kang’s drawings are more than just pretty pictures. They contain many stories. For this reason, her work is less something to be looked at and more something to be “read,” much like the still life of the Netherlands centuries ago were more than mere depictions of flowers.
In the 17th century, the Netherlands, having gained independence from Spain, experienced an unprecedented period of prosperity. The economy grew rapidly, and a bourgeois middle class emerged. At the same time, Calvinism, which denounced idolatry, discouraged the commissioning of religious images by churches, monasteries, and royal courts. This left a gap that the bourgeoisie and ordinary citizens began to fill. They commissioned paintings in which they could display exotic treasures: luxurious fruits, foods, and flowers imported through overseas trade, while simultaneously signalling modesty and piety.
Dutch still lifes became popular as a result. Outwardly, they flaunted material wealth and beauty through highly realistic depictions of rare goods, yet they also reflected the restraint and moral virtue valued by Calvinism. Often, they carried the message of vanitas: that all worldly things are fleeting and ultimately vain. Dutch still lifes were therefore not merely to be viewed; one had to reach each object, its placement, and its meaning. In the same way, JooLee Kang’s drawings invite careful reading.
Returning to Kang’s drawings, the flowers and butterflies that appear are not arranged merely for aesthetic pleasure. Of course, one cannot read her work in the same way as a Dutch still life. Her drawings contain no display of wealth or beauty, no nod to ascetic living, and no religious maxims. Yet her work still requires careful reading.
If you look closely at the plants and animals in her drawings, something different emerges from the pretty picture perceived at first glance. There are genetically modified plants and animals, mutations caused by radiation, abandoned dogs and cats, scenes of roadkill; stories that are often uncomfortable to confront. These are not imagined creatures; they are contemporary forms of nature drawn from natural history museums, science magazines, news, or the internet. Her work captures the natural world as it exists now, the relationship between humans and nature, and the present moment itself.
It is, in essence, our story today. At the same time, her drawings do not impose any moral lesson or demand reflection. Instead, they reveal the current state of human and natural relations and leave the viewer with a question: “What about you?” For this reason, Kang’s drawings may require viewers to come close, to examine each detail, and to respond to the questions embedded within them.
Installation
If JooLee Kang’s still-life drawings are “read”, her installations, by contrast, are “seen and felt.” The installations, though derived from her distinctive ballpoint drawing technique, differ greatly from the drawings themselves. As seen in the series, small fragments of drawings come together to form larger masses. The plants and animals, the fragmented images, are drawn in the same short, precise ballpoint strokes as in her still lifes. These peculiar creatures are copied, cut out, and layered, gradually taking over the space.
The experience of the installation is more sensory, as viewers face the space directly and engage with it. Perhaps for this reason, although the installation begins with tiny pieces of paper, the resulting mass seems almost alive, as if it might writhe or move like a living organism.
Residency and the Experiment of Frottage
Her work at the Cheongju Art Studio Residency changed in a way that was almost startling. She placed discarded plastic objects beneath paper and scratched over them with a ballpoint pen to create images. Many people will remember doing something similar as children: placing a coin, leaf, or wire mesh under paper and rubbing it with a pencil or crayon to transfer the texture; a technique called frottage. Kang recently adopted this frottage technique in her work, and the results are undeniably different. The grotesque plants and animals that often appeared in her earlier work, as well as explicit references to nature, are no longer present. The only thing that remains consistent is her continued use of paper and ballpoint pen.
In truth, JooLee Kang’s frottage did not appear out of nowhere. She had an opportunity to attend a residency in the United States in 2015, at the Willapa Bay AiR. The residency was located in a remote bay, mostly inhabited by people whose livelihood came from oyster farming. During her time there, she said she would go to the beach every day and collect trash, much like someone gathering shells as keepsakes. Perhaps because her work often centered on plants and animals, the floating debris naturally drew her attention.
Time passed, and by the end of the residency, she could not bring all the collected trash back with her, so she decided to try frottage. One might wonder why she chose frottage instead of photographing or drawing the objects. Presumably, unlike photos or drawings, frottage requires a direct, tactile engagement with the object itself, a confrontation with the material that bypasses the mediation of another medium.
After that came works addressing plastic and marine debris. She drew turtles trapped in beer can holders or seals with their necks caught in wire, but it seems her attention leaned more toward the surfaces themselves. During her residency in Cheongju, she returned to frottage once again. Not with ocean debris this time, but with collected plastics. Washed clean to look almost new, then deliberately warped with heat, or selecting plastics that were harder or more reflective, and transferred them through frottage. Perhaps “transferred” isn’t quite the right word. It’s more like she embraced the traces they bore.
She then placed the plastic bottles on top of her carefully worked drawings as part of an installation, making it difficult to see the drawings clearly. The effect evokes the feelings she had toward nature at that moment.
Perhaps that is what a residency is for: a time and space where a studio practice can veer off slightly, where it is allowed to experiment, where one can look somewhere else after always looking in the same direction. The frottage in JooLee Kang’s work is still experimental. An ongoing process. Where it will ultimately lead, or when it will be “finished”, remains unknown.
Labour
Whether painting or installation, her work begins with paper and a ballpoint pen. A collection of tiny lines drawn with a simple, everyday material. Shoulders grow stiff, eyes weary. Labour-intensive. This is how she describes her practice.
The way she moves while drawing is noticeably different from most painters. There’s no path to step back from a large canvas and sweep broad strokes. She sits before the work, gathering and layering the fine lines of her pen to “construct” the image. And she cannot delegate the drawings to anyone else. She draws endlessly, with no shortcuts, no room for sloppiness.
Not only the drawings but the installations are labour-intensive as well. Hundreds, even thousands, of palm-sized paper drawings are copied, cut out, and attached to spread across a space. The scale grows larger, yet the work remains manual, one piece at a time. Labour is still required.
In installations, her labour is often temporary. Because the work must be made while breathing with the space, any change in the space alters the form of the installation. For this reason, her labour is both fleeting and endlessly repetitive, like Sisyphus condemned to push the boulder again and again. Each installation demands the work anew.
Yet for her, this labour differs from Sisyphus's punishment. The labour-intensive process is a way of understanding and communicating with the world. Using ordinary tools like paper and pen to face the world with flexibility, this is what labour means in her practice.
To her, art is
What, then, is art to JooLee Kang. The question arises naturally. Ideas about art differ from person to person. For some it offers comfort, for others awakening, for others emotion. As expected for her art is not simply beautiful scenery or still life.
For her, art must reflect changes in life and reality. Rather than a lifeless object hanging in an exhibition space, it should remain in constant dialogue with the present, a window that helps us better understand the world. As the artist grows older and watches the world change, her work changes as well. At times it may seem puzzling or unexpected, but this too is Kang’s way of communicating with the world. It is how she unfolds the stories of the world before us.