Kang's Barber Shop, 2023
Dave Young Kim
Lightbox sign, latex, acrylic paint on wood panel
Kang' Barber Shop premiered at Dave Young Kim's one-man show: Signs of Passage: Nostalgia and New Beginnings.
"Home, for most of us, is the repository of cherished memories filled with sensations where we feel truly cherished and nurtured. However, as the relentless passage of time sculpts the trajectories of our lives, our once-solid idea of home begins to fragment, and the gap between the past and the present widens.
The past, irreplaceable, is a notion we long to revisit, yet it eludes our grasp. Places transform, and memories falter, but in the face of these changes, the yearning for a place to call home persists as an innate human instinct. "Signs of Passage" delves into the complex interplay of nostalgia and new beginnings in our quest for home.
The past, irreplaceable, is a notion we long to revisit, yet it eludes our grasp. Places transform, and memories falter, but in the face of these changes, the yearning for a place to call home persists as an innate human instinct. "Signs of Passage" delves into the complex interplay of nostalgia and new beginnings in our quest for home.
Through the lens of personal experiences and the challenges life presents - such as war, death, displacement, and conflict - the notion of home is reshaped. It is reduced to a distant memory, existing primarily in aging photographs and within the recesses of our hearts. My formative years in Los Angeles, marked by a landscape of business signs and graffiti, have played a profound role in shaping the themes I explore in my work.
"Signs of Passage" is an exploration of the art of manufacturing nostalgia, intricately interwoven with my cultural history, and memories, not necessarily my own. My approach is rooted in a profound sense of loss and longing.
The work confronts the boundary between the past and the present, erasing the distinctions that separate our experiences, generations, and lifetimes. In doing so, I strive to evoke a visual representation of our perceptions of established lives or the tenuous paths that led to them.
Each piece serves as a vignette, a narrative of a migrant who lived a past life in Korea and continues that journey in America. The signs and symbols within these works are a testament to the resilience and the subsequent settlement of a new life. The duality of signage is a reflection of the convergence of two languages and two worlds, caught in the liminal space between them. This is a story of generational connection, tracing the footsteps of those who embarked on a new life in America, and the journey of the generation who followed, who grapple with the quest for identity and the search for belonging."
