Hot Shot Laurie Kang is an artist who combines photography, collage, sculpture and installation to create her work, often creating new abstractions or "surrealities." Of her winning submission, Party Alone, Laurie says:
This series is the result of creating images that consist of both 2D and 3D collages, sculptures and installations. It's an exploration of abstraction, and a conceptual exploration of the medium of photography; the images express a 3-dimensionality but are rendered 2-dimensional through the final product of a flat print.
For the Hey, Hot Shot! First Edition 2011 Showcase, which is on view through January 22nd at Jen Bekman Gallery, the artist will present her work in its original 3D form.
And check out this great video interview of the artist explaining her work and her competitive nature.
Untitled, from the series Party Alone, 2010 by Laurie Kang
Living in: Toronto, Ontario
Your formal and/or informal education and training in photography: BFA in photography from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec
How you pay the bills: I work part time at The Power Plant. It's a contemporary art gallery in Toronto with great programming. I also do some freelance work, whether it's photography, collage or album artwork and design for bands. Sometimes I'll sell work. It's always changing; the unreliability of it all keeps me on my toes.
Best advice you ever received as a photographer: Work that is made with passion will find its place.
Three artists who inspire you:
General Idea
Thomas Demand
Paul Butler
Photograph (or other work of art) that you can't get out of your head, ever: Mike Nelson's I, Impostor
Reading now: I just finished Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace last night. I'm now onto the F.R. David series, The Artist's Joke, and Murakami's 1Q84.
Top three photo-related websites/blogs:
I Heart Photograph
JSBJ
Blind Mist
Top non-photo website/blog:
Currently into Super/Collider
Tell us a little about the inspiration/impetus behind the series you submitted, and why you felt it was important to share this work: Party Alone is a project where I made installations and sculptures within my living space. I used objects that I'd collected, then abstracted and re-contextualized them. They're meant to be ironic and humorous, with darker undertones of isolation and the strange. The work also addresses photography's inherent tensions concerning dimensionality. The photograph turns these 3-dimensional situations into 2-dimensional prints. For the Jen Bekman show, the images will be re-established as 3-dimensional objects through their final renderings.
Next project(s): I'm working with pairing landscape (the organic) with non-organic textures and surfaces. It centers around the idea of psychogeography and creating a psychic experience through the landscape. I'm reconfiguring images of abstract textures and idyllic landscapes that I shot, combining them to make collages, sculptures and photographs of sculptures. Again, underlying this work is playing with the dialogue concerning photography's nature.