Layered Beyond
JooLee Kang
My recent solo exhibition Layered Beyond (May-June, 2026) is a continuation of my solo exhibition No Arrow of Time (Oct.-Nov.,2025), which focused on the process of occupying the pictorial surface in drawing and my approaching attitude to work in the studio. My first artist’s book No Arrow of Time is released as one of major artworks in this exhibition. The idea for the book grew out of two preceding works: Girasung (2025) — a drawing work of 21 panels with variable configurations that deliberately resisted any drive toward narrative closure — and Ritual to Find the Philosopher's Stone (2025), which created as a collaborative process with Korean traditional paper masters focusing on repetition, fleeting moments, and errors while I contemplated the boundary between utility and futility.
The title of the book, No Arrow of Time, is conceived in opposition to the physics concept of the "Arrow of Time" — the idea that time flows in a single direction, divided into past, present, and future. It refers instead to the perspective that the flow of time is a phenomenon constructed by human consciousness, and that time, regarded as a dimension analogous to space, is a state in which all events exist simultaneously. It also carries the claim that the passage of time can vary relatively depending on the observer's velocity and gravitational conditions. No Arrow of Time is a metaphor for my own working process — one that does not move in a single direction, but exists as pure moment, where labor that consumes an infinitely long time intersects with choices made in an instant.
No Arrow of Time contains a world in which the boundaries between nature and civilization, organism and inorganic matter, past and present, reality and illusion have dissolved. Through a non-linear structure that refuses directionality of time within a medium of the book conventionally read in linear sequence, it proposes an experience of "time existing as moment," "simultaneously coexisting structure," "repeated labor," and "choices made in an instant" — an invitation to dwell within multiple temporalities at once.
My artistic practice is rooted in the history of drawing as an act of collecting, classifying, observing, and recording. Working primarily with ink on paper, I build hybrid forms and narratives, and the act of drawing responds immediately — split-second decisions producing shifts across the surface. Cross-hatching, the layering and crossing of many individual lines in repetition, is not simply a drawing technique but a structure of proliferation and collision. No single line exists independently. Lines overlap, repeat, and encroach upon one another, altering each other's density and direction as forms grow into being. These hybrid forms do not remain merely beautiful or strange objects; they pose questions to the binary, anthropocentric systems of classification that divide nature from the artificial and ecology from civilization. Duality is not contradiction but an overlapping of values — an overlapping that I maintain without resolution. Organism and inorganic matter absorb one another; past and present operate simultaneously on a single surface. Reality and illusion are not separated but experienced on the same plane.
Beings with Blurred Boundaries (2025-6) is created as a collaborating work with Korean traditional paper masters in Jeonju since 2024, which begins of the process to create the paper: dak fiber prepared by the artisans is shaken and lifted with a deckle, pressed, dried, dyed, and dried again. After I draws on the prepared papers, they are layered, soaked in water, kneaded so the dak fibers adhere to one another, dried, and drawn upon again — a process repeated in cycles. It is a work of layered accumulation and entanglement of line, image, and medium. Each layer remains without disappearing, carrying its own distinct temporality and duration, overlapping and interfering with the others. There is no direction the image must move toward, no beginning it must start from, no end it must reach. Different strata remain simultaneously activated — overlapping, crossing, persisting in a state of ongoing accumulation.
The "crossing boundary " I attempt does not mean transcendence — an escape from something. It is not a leap, but a gradual blurring or deepening through continuous erosion and sedimentation, a process of reconfiguration. Forms are still in the midst of change; lines retain the possibility of continued accumulation. The Korean title of this exhibition Po Wol (抱越) means to embrace and carry across. This exhibition is a cross-section of an ecosystem still in the process of mutation. It seeks to remain open rather than offer closure, and hopes to become an event in which the audience briefly participates in this ecosystem.