Ik-Joong Kang

Town Topics, Princeton / Dec 5, 2005

The Vision of Community in a World of Books   

Stuart Mitchner

 

 

 

Say it's an early autumn afternoon in 1985 and you do a Rip Van Winkle, falling asleep under a tree in the Kingston cemetery to wake up 20 years later thinking only a day has passed. Walking into Princeton you can tell things are not quite the same, and as Rt. 27 becomes Nassau Street you notice plenty of changes, enough to suggest that your nap lasted way more than a day, but nothing to make you drop your jaw. Some places are gone, some have changed names, and yet everything feels the same, maybe because it's getting dark and fall is in the air. A glance toward the campus brings no major surprises. Nassau Hall is gently alight and looking as subtle, dignified, and beautiful as it did in 1985.

Figuring that the Princeton Public Library is the most likely place to find out what's been going on in the world since he fell asleep, old Rip turns right and heads down Witherspoon.

Here's where his jaw drops.

What happened to the library? What's that four-story torch lighting up the sky across the street from where Griggs Corner Amoco used to be?

Maybe you, too, have experienced a few Rip Van Winkle moments driving or walking past the new library since it opened. You can almost take it for granted in the daytime, but when all its lights are blazing it's still an amazement.

The old library was no slouch architecturally, after all, but at night it looked muted and modest. It didn't comInspired by the Champ

A visit to the new Muhammad Ali Center.

BY GORDON MARINO  Thursday, December 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

 

LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Physically broken from his many years in the ring, Muhammad Ali could easily be regarded as a walking--or, rather, shuffling--argument against professional pugilism. Nevertheless, it was through boxing that the silver-tongued sweet scientist was able to reach beyond the ropes and inspire people around the globe. Over the past decade, many individuals have come together in an attempt to institutionalize the boxer's unique spirit in the form of a Muhammad Ali Center.

On the eve of the center's inaugural event, which brought Bill Clinton and many other luminaries to this river town, Mr. Ali's wife, Lonnie, told me: "Back in the mid-'90s, a distant relative put on an Ali boxing memorabilia show in Louisville. It was a great success. Afterward, we were approached by entrepreneurs who wanted to build a museum." Because of her husband's ailments, Mrs. Ali does virtually all of the talking for the man once known as the Louisville Lip. She explained: "Muhammad was not interested in something that put the spotlight on his boxing accomplishments and on the past. Instead, he wanted it to be a living gift that reached out to people and especially children, encouraging them to be respectful of one another and to develop self-confidence and self-discipline--qualities that enabled Muhammad to realize his dreams."

Jerry Abramson, mayor of Louisville, told me that the city donated the land for the building. He also proudly noted that 40% of the $80 million raised for the project came from individuals and corporations in Mr. Ali's home state of Kentucky. The CEO of the center, Michael Fox, added that there is a continuing campaign to raise $20 million more to establish an endowment to cover the operating costs. Though much work remains to be done, the 93,000-square-foot center opened to the public on Nov. 21.

 In addition to being a repository for important boxing artifacts, the center, in conjunction with the University of Louisville, will host international programs aimed at promoting peace and justice. Ina Brown Bond, chairwoman of its board, observed: "There are many governments that are suspicious of the United States but not of Muhammad Ali, and that gives us hope that the center could perform a special function in mitigating international conflicts."

One of the chief architects, Lee Skolnick, struggled with the task of designing a building that captured the characteristics of the man who inspired it. Viewed from the exterior, the center is thick and massive at the base. But as the eye moves up the structure, it becomes lighter and more airy. Mr. Skolnick observed: "Our understanding of Ali is intertwined with the emergence of mass media in the early '60s and '70s. Most people came to know Ali through media images and sound bites, and I wanted to convey that fact in the architecture. For example, the roof is in the shape of butterfly wings, echoing that famous Ali adage, 'float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.' And the exterior is embedded with colored ceramic-tile representations of well-known press images of the champ."

Mr. Skolnick and the chief curator, Susan Shaffer Nahmias, also envisioned a space that was as warm, generous and playful as Mr. Ali. A visit to the museum begins in the amphitheater with a powerful video about his life that is strung together with lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If." From there, one moves on to two floors of interactive exhibits that seek to show Mr. Ali's development from a boxer into a humanitarian. The sheer preponderance of moralizing messages can be grating. And one visitor complained that as generous an individual as Mr. Ali is, the center should be generous enough to include a small display honoring another less-self-promoting boxing champion who also broke down racial barriers, Joe Louis.

As an athlete, Mr. Ali had the magical ability to attract interest in his bouts from those who were not ordinarily boxing fans. However, a fascination with boxing will certainly enhance a visitor's experience of the center. Though there are many exhibits that would fit well in a civil-rights museum and others that explore the debate over the Vietnam War, the boxing-related presentations (such as the robe that Elvis Presley gave Mr. Ali) pack the real punch. Many are just plain fun. There is a mock-up of Mr. Ali's Deer Lake training facilities in which visitors can learn to hit a speed bag, and there is a strange contraption that conveys an impression of the force of a heavyweight punch.

After a virtual journey through the boxer's life and times, which does not eschew discussions of some of the icon's moral blemishes, such as Mr. Ali's womanizing and his ruthless behavior toward Joe Frazier, patrons follow a spiral staircase into a hall that is intended to lead them back into themselves. In a room lined with Ik-Joong Kang's poignant mosaic composed of tiles decorated by children from 141 countries, there is a bank of computers that beckon the visitors to fill out personality questionnaires and articulate their life goals. They are then invited to link up with an online coach who will help them fulfill their aspirations.

 There were recordings of Mr. Ali's fights reverberating as I strolled around the exhibits with Angelo Dundee, Mr. Ali's legendary trainer. As we rounded a corner, the 84-year-old Mr. Dundee glimpsed a huge photo of Cassius Clay--as Mr. Ali was known back then--with his mouth taped shut. Mr. Dundee chuckled and burst out, "Hey, I did that. I put the tape on his mouth." Mr. Ali was, of course, famous for his braggadocio and predictions, and Mr. Dundee, who knew a little about fanning interest in a fight, used the tape as a photo prop. Later Mr. Dundee wistfully added: "Being with Ali was like riding a comet. I was blessed to share in his life. This center is a fantastic monument to a man who deserves it because he has been so good for the whole human race."

Mr. Marino writes on boxing for The Wall Street Journal.

 

e at you with palatial pillars; it didn't glitter and gleam like a diamond as big as the Ritz; nor did it create the illusion of candlelit shelves ranged within the brilliance, a touch of medieval library mystery housed in a resplendently contemporary display case. When you pass through the tall doors you know how it used to feel to walk into great public spaces back in the days when railway terminals, movie theaters, and libraries were built on the grand scale.

Inside you can find cozy lounges, classy carpeting, fireplaces, statues, a shop, a cafe, a big community room for readings and performances and the upcoming Friends of the Library Book Sale. Art graces every floor. Art, however, can seem at a disadvantage when it's displayed in a place where people are reading, browsing, studying, or surfing the web. The photographs of Ricardo Barros can be seen on the second floor through October 30, but how many busy people using the high-tech equipment will take time to ponder the negative print of a man in profile you may mistake for a lion at first glance or the one of a figure looming in a black overcoat, shoes sunk in snow, as he stands facing the Manhattan skyline when the Twin Towers were still there, a manikin propped on his shoulder.

How many patrons even know of the ceramic art of Katherine Hackl in the Princeton Collection Room, which seems to be off-limits much of the time? This is tile heaven and it should be seen, even if you have to ask a librarian to let you in for a look.

"Happy World"

It's safe to say that the most popular work of art in the library and the most accessible is the one filling the wall of the corridor off the lobby entrance, the patchwork parade people entering from the new parking deck see before they see anything else. Ik-Joong Kang's mixed-media wall mosaic of 3,700 three-by-three inch tiles, "Happy World," is a masterful collaboration with and about the Princeton community.

Try the Van Winkle point of view again. You can almost see him leaning on his cane, shoulders stooped, mouth a little less agape as he muses and smiles his way up and down and across the wall of many colors. However overwhelmed he might have been by the brave new world of the building and all its 21st-century machinery, he can find familiar things here, ordinary images from the previous century, messages like "For me, real entertainment is the interplay between heart and mind," not in cold type but written by hand. You know he'd smile to read a poem called "The Prayer of the Fox" by an eight-year-old. What better way to ease his entry back into the world on the other side of his long nap?

Try another, darker point of view: with the devastation of Katrina in mind, this conglomeration of odds and ends can be turned around to represent the opposite of a happy world, the flotsam and jetsam of civilization swept away in a chaotic tide, not unlike the letters and photos and souvenirs and cherished scraps of memory destroyed by the hurricane and the flood in New Orleans. Turn it at another angle and the wall becomes a magnificent salvage job, a whole community of items rescued in a single playful vision, a quilt of many colors that ultimately holds its own against the forces of nature: happy, yes, and bright, and bountiful.

Now try the poet/anthropologist's point of view. Imagine someone at an archaelogical dig in 3005 looking for clues to the way we lived in this melange of plastic dogs, coffee mugs, toy cars, keys with faded tags you can almost read, a notice from 1909 about the Free Public Library, a bowling pin, a Buddha, the exposed innards of a parking meter, a badminton racket, a harmonica, playing cards, a squash racket, a Phish CD, a compass, the faces of children you seem to know, and families, and even a library card from that piece of antiquity called a card catalogue. In the end, the diggers speculate that this ancient mural must have enjoyed a prominent place in the town's most prominent building, the center of the community, where people came to enjoy it and smile and be assured that the thread of art somehow tied their world together.

That's the beauty of it: it all works, it balances out. The Happy World imagery is picked up in other library art: in the pattern and colors of the quilt above the fireplace on the second floor, in Maargaret K. Johnson's layered textiled wall sculpture, in the use of thread in Buzz Spector's "The Irony" and "What Next," even in the doll's house and the aquarium on the third floor, and especially in Faith Ringgold's cut glass tile mosaic "Tar Beach" with its deep blue urban night sky, family at table, kids on a blanket, and a figure taking flight in the sky.

Ik-Joong Kang was born in Korea near an American military base whose souvenir shop gave him an early look at the cross-cultural interface he would later explore, manifesting the idea that nothing is trivial; that nothing is merely, boringly random but can make funny sense when you put it in a fertile context; that coincidence is art, everything's in play, everything's of use, because, as this artist has said (probably on one of his haiku-like tiles): "Art is easy."

 

Chicago Sun-Times,  Dec 18, 2005

The Greatest: Muhammad Ali Center

A showcase for global ideals

by Dave Hoekstra

 

 

 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Just as Elvis Presley's Graceland is the symbol of a Southern dream, the Muhammad Ali Center will become a "greatland" for global ideals. The Ali Center opened weeks ago in downtown Louisville with the creed "The Greatest Is Yet to Come."

The Champ now stands with the King as one of the biggest American tourist destinations devoted to one person. And while Elvis had a hit with "Kentucky Rain," Ali reigns in Kentucky and beyond.

The Ali Center -- only a portion of which features boxing memorabilia -- even has a bejeweled jumpsuit titled "The People's Choice" that was a gift to Ali from the King. Ali first wore it into the ring, appropriately enough, in Las Vegas on Feb. 14, 1973, where he whupped Joe Bugner in 12 rounds.

The new six-story facility in Ali's hometown consists of 40 interactive exhibits, incorporating 19 different languages. Many exhibits are geared toward children.

And they're about something more than Ali himself.

"When we embarked on this project we made it clear we did not want the Ali Center to be a place that idolized Muhammad," said Lonnie Ali, the 49-year-old wife of Muhammad Ali. The center opened on Nov. 19, the couple's 19th wedding anniversary. "Rather, it is about the spirituality of the human being and how it centers a person, the way it centered Muhammad."

A heartwarming anchor of the Ali Center is a colorful 55-foot- long installation composed of more than 5,000 tile drawings by children from 141 countries. The "Hope and Dream" project is designed by New York-based Korean artist Ik-Joong Kang and is underwritten by actress Angelina Jolie.

Children were asked to depict their hopes for the future and wishes for the world. Zaki from Afghanistan wrote, "I am 8 years old, an Afghan girl dreaming of education and employment." A child from Israel wrote "Peace," along with two men shaking hands.

The $80 million Ali Center honors peace, respect and social responsibility. In fact, the Nov. 19 opening night gala was delayed by 40 minutes because President Bill Clinton was meeting with the Ali family. Their conversation reportedly included the vision of using the Ali Center as a location for conflict resolution in the spirit of the United Nations.

 

 

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Angelo, August/December 2004

Buddha with Lucky Objects

Ik-Joong Kang

By Karen Gahafer

 

 

 

Small and inexpensive, everyday items take on a spiritual meaning when arranged by Korean American artist IL-Joong Kang, who lives and works in New York City, first arrived in America, he was fascinated with objects that the consumers purchased here.

Over the years the native of Chrong Ju, Korea collected mass quantities of these treasures from five- and- dime stores, objects such as hand held blenders, plastic souvenirs, and even small children's toys like a metal xylophone.

Recently the fruits of this undertaking made an appearance in the exhibition: "Buddha with Lucky Objects," which is installed in Speed's Presences Gallery.

 

The artist, who received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Hong-IK University in Seoul in 1984 and a Master of Fine Art in 1987 from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, is noted for his small format compositions in which he meticulously re-creates a larger, more interactive installation piece, which invites the viewer to experience the whole work of art.

 

The area is silent as the viewer walks up the ramp and enters the door. To the left of the door, an exposed area is circumfused with gold, inviting curiosity to come take a closer look.

Upon entering is silence. Inside this dimly lit space, three concaved panels with thousands of small Buddha figures, painted on wood block, are placedto create intrigue. As the viewers come closer to the central circular enclosure, they see hundreds of objects that kang collected; also sound begins to fill this space.

Tiny chime-like sounds echo throughout as the walls vibrate, as if a presence other than the occupant exists. Once the viewer ceases to move, the sounds diminish; again there is silence.

 

Kang explains that the viewer sees, Buddha, Buddha sees the standing person, and in turn the viewer then reflects on him or herself in the silence.

Julien Robson, the curator of Contemporary Art and visionary behind presence, explains this installation piece, "In one sense it becomes this really interesting cultural hybridity the repetition of Buddha and creation of an almost sort of sanctuary space; this space becoming spiritual."

Robson added, "The area in which the wooden Buddha figure is seated will be heavely lit. Then the sense of it is something that makes you present. It is acknowledgment of the presence in which you are the controller."

 

An interesting juxtaposition adds to this exhibit. The surroundings of the outer exterior of the museum room, which houses the Presence gallery, is filled with Christian tapestry, while the interior space is filled with Buddha Spirituality.

"It is like inside a temple," Lanna Versluys, community Relation of The Speed said.

When asked what response he was trying to evoke in the viewer when they encounter "Buddha with lucky Object, Kang replied, "I want the viewers to swim freely experiencing my art in an intellectual playground."

Kang's work is about the past and present; interviewed are experiences upon his arriving in the United States and influences from his Korean childhood, like the shamans in the village from where he once lived. His piece connected them for the viewer to feel on a spiritual level. "Buddha with Lucky Object" is also about identity. Kang explains that he is a tightrope walker. In the center he hold the stick in which he must balance the past and the present.

 

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Press Release, 2004

Happy World at Princeton Public Library

Would you like to build a wall of peace?

by Nancy Russell

 

 

 

Would you like to join an artist’s dream of creating a virtual mural using children’s drawings?  Artist Ik-Joong Kang, who is known for his large-scale projects that are composed of  thousands of 3” x 3” small paintings, sculptures and text art,  dreams of collecting one million drawings from children all over the world and creating a mural of art on the internet where children can locate their own drawings, scroll across the virtual wall to look at other’ children’s work and share their dreams and messages in a world without boundaries.

“World peace is a big room.  To get in there, the key is children’s dreams,”  Kang says.  

Kang worked with children in South Korea in 1999 to create “100,000 Dreams”.  Thousands of drawings made by South Korean children were displayed inside a one-kilometer long greenhouse near the demilitarized zone, that was lit up at night, one writer explains, as if to lure “North Korean children on the other side to come out and play.”

Kang followed this project with “Amazed World,” an installation composed of 34,000 children’s drawings from all over the world, at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.  The installation was to open on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.   Kang, who lives in New York, was in the U.N. building when tragedy struck in lower Manhattan.  “The children’s dreams were uptown, but the public couldn’t see them because downtown was on fire,” he says.  He had assembled thousands of drawings from children living in more than 125 countries into a large-scale installation which remained on display for one year at the U.N.  From the mountains, the cities, the seaside, “children were able to sit alongside each other,” Kang says, because “although they never met, the drawings were displayed on the wall together.”  

Now the Korean-born artist would like to collect a million drawings and take children’s dreams to a bigger stage.  “Amazed World 2” will extend his vision of building a “wall of peace through children’s dreams” on the internet, by posting children’s drawings on a virtual mural on the internet site, www.amazedworld.com.  

The drawings should be drawn in crayon on a 3-inch by 3-inch square piece of paper and the artwork will be scanned onto a virtual mural on the internet at www.amazedworld.com.    Children will be invited to submit drawings in crayon on a 3-inch by 3-inch square piece of paper via the mail and also electronically, that depict their dreams for themselves and the world, “what they wish for, what they would like to share with others,” he says.  Each drawing will be assigned an address or identification code so that children will be able to log onto the website and locate their own drawing, as well as enjoy the art work of others.  

When Kang has accumulated enough drawings, he would like to incorporate them into a 15-foot-high, one-mile-long curtain of laminated art that will stretch across the Imjin River that divides North Korea and South Korea.  

“Children’s art and children’s dreams can connect the two countries, which have been separated for over 50 years,” he says.  “This will be like a wall of art that can break down the wall that has caused pain, hunger and suffering on both sides.”  

“The division of North and South Korea is not only a Korean problem, it’s a world problem.  If we can solve this problem, we can solve the world’s problems.”

 

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Princeton Public Library mural will be multlingual

By Jennifer Potash

 

 

 

Upon discovering that over 50 languages are spoken in Princeton, artist Ik-Joong Kang has decided to capture the town's international flavor in the mural he is designing for the new Princeton Public Library.

Mr. Kang invites Princeton students in kindergarten through grade 12 who are native speakers of one of the 54 world languages spoken in households in the Princeton Regional School District to write the word "library" (without quotation marks) in their native language or script on a 3-inch-square paper using ink, crayon, marker, paint or any material other than pencil.

The paper should also include the name of the language, but not the country in which it is spoken, written in English. He also welcomes submissions of the word "library" written in English, as well as original artwork on 3-inch-square paper.

An accompanying sheet of paper should include the name of the student and his or her school and grade. Both sheets should be placed in a single plastic sandwich bag and submitted to the library by Feb. 21. Selected entries will be mounted on 3-inch blocks of wood and incorporated into the 30-foot mural, titled "Happy World," which will contain about 5,000, 3-inch-square paintings by the artist.

Mr. Kang visited the library on Jan. 17 to collect small objects submitted by the community for the mural and was impressed by the extent of Princeton's cultural diversity, said Nancy Russell, a library trustee and chairwoman of the library's Art Committee.

"When he learned from our committee that so many world languages were spoken natively in Princeton homes, he was delighted," Ms. Russell said. "He was very responsive to ideas that would include this fact about the town's culture and linguistic diversity."

According to the Princeton Regional Schools, the following languages are spoken as native tongues in the homes of Princeton students in the district: Afrikaans, Akan, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Ashanti, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cantonese, Catalan, Creole-Haitian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Ewe, Farsi, Finnish, Flemish, French, Ga, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Quecha, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Slovenian, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Taiwanese, Telugu, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek and Yoruba.

Mr. Kang prefers that the world language project be child-oriented, said Jeff Nathanson, the library's art project manager. Adults also may submit an offering and all will be delivered to the artist.

Mr. Kang, 43, was born in Cheong Ju, South Korea, and moved at age 24 to New York, where he now lives with his wife and son. His work is widely exhibited, including exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and a 2001 work, "Amazed World," which included 34,000 children's drawings from 135 countries, displayed at the United Nations.

 
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