kang hyung koo CV

Working with oil paint, Kang Hyung Koo creates extremely realistic portraits of iconic personalities such as Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe although his extensive body of work includes movers and shakers spanning Princess Diana, Andy Warhol, Audrey Hepburn, and Salvador Dali. Playing upon his subjects’ eyes as the focal point of his work, Korea-born Kang’s portraiture then invites viewers in to appreciate other character-defining features such as facial contours and the shape and expression of nose, mouth, and hair, used by the artist to imbue life into his paintings. To Kang, the aspiration has always been to capture the essence of his subjects— their public/personal selves—in one image. A Bachelor of Fine Arts holder from the Chungang University in Seoul, Kang’s work has been shown and collected in Korea, Southeast Asia, the USA, and the United Kingdom. The artist has also seen many of his works go under the hammer at Christie’s auctions in recent years.