Lotus Laurie Kang Empty Vessels Make the Most Noise
Sitting at the intersection between photography, sculpture, collage and installation, Laurie Kang’s practice investigates the space between image and object. Examining the process of abstracting the everyday, her work disrupts the borders of the photograph to occupy three-dimensional space.
This exhibition uses the vehicle of the image—photographic paper—as a point of departure. The artist subjects the material to an array of manipulations, producing, in its final state, a multi-dimensional object. Her abstractions engage photography critically, calling for meditation on the layered act of looking. The adage “Empty vessels make the most noise” acknowledges the potential for failure in Kang’s process, injecting it with a sense of play and experiment.
Lotus Laurie Kang, a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist, holds a BFA in photography from Concordia University and an MFA from Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College in New York. She creates installations that concern the body and the forces that shape it. Drawing on biology, feminist theory and even science-fiction, Kang’s work reveals the body as a process, always in a state of becoming, forevermore in relation to other bodies and environments around us. She draws on her Korean heritage, often altering, elevating and preserving materials that shaped her upbringing in thought-provoking ways.