Ik-Joong Kang

Born in 1960, in Cheong Ju, Korea, Ik-Joong Kang has lived and worked in New York City since 1984. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and a BFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. In June 2014 Kang was among the artists featured in the Korea pavilion that received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

An extremely prolific artist, he has had a minimum of one exhibition every year since 1999. In 2010 his Things I Know piece was featured as part of the Korean pavilion in Shanghai Expo, Shanghai, China. In 2002 he completed the project Amazed World commissioned by the Republic of Korea in association with UNICEF. This project was based on the artist’s belief of the rights of children to basic personal, political and social freedoms. Approximately 40,000 children's works from 150 countries were displayed in a gigantic maze installation in the UN building lobby in New York from September, 2001 through April, 2002 and included works by children from diverse cultures, religions, political beliefs and environments.

Kang has received many awards and fellowships, including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. His work is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cologne, Germany; the Samsung Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea. In the spring of 1997, he was awarded The Special Merit prize in the 47th Venice Biennale.