Whang In-kie
Digital Landscape

March 8 -March 22, 2000

The large-format works of Whang Inkie reveal a process upon which most of the images we see today are based. Just as on a monitor, the artist compiles his landscapes on a matrix-pixel for pixel.
This is the case in Digital Landscape 000-002(2000), created by application of silicon dots on a predetermined grid system, or in Digital Landscape 999-004(1999), in which black and white lego pieces have been assembled to form of a type of relief. This technique enabled Whang to reproduce his picture in any conceivable format and, if necessary, to modify them to suit the existing exhibition conditions.

A professor of art and winner of the '1997 Artist of the Year" award in Korea, Whang lived for 11 years in the USA. Consequently he is familiar with both western and eastern traditions. At a time of "westylisation", his main concern is to reflect upon his own cultural roots and regional traditions. Consequently in his work, he combines Korean themes and motifs with modern methods of representation and uses this ink to meditate traditional Asian art to the younger generations of his country and his contemporaries from other cultures. His works form a synthesis between (western) abstract Expressionism and eastern pen-and-ink drawings.

Serving as the model for the artist are traditional giant-format pen-and-ink drawings(up to 29 metre long) which are produced in his atelier based on sketches of the real landscapes. Both in his pen-and-ink drawings and digital images, the painting aspect of black on white is of crucial significance for Whang, as is striking a balance between the natural and the artificial. Whang himself describes his work with an analogy:"If I want an apple, I need a seed; so it is that a drawing is the natural seed for my painting."

Dirk Eckart