“FERMENTATION OF FURY” (김치의분노)

130 X 160 CM

ACRYLIC & SCREEN INK ON CANVAS

2008 CASPER KANG

Around the end of 2006 I saw my grandmother and some of her friends making 김치(kimchi). I remember being quite impressed by the whole setup, or composition (I mean not the procedure of making the kimchi but more in terms of how it looked in a mise en scene way) of them working away like that. My grandmother doesn’t like turning on her lights because she loves to conserve energy. . .I think its more to save money than for the environment. She has these windows that are pretty narrow but long(hornizontally) so there was dramatic lighting coming in from behind them, so they had this dark, lurking in the shadows look. Although I probably have seen someone making kimchi at some point in my life before, I was probably disinterested and saw it through my peripheral vision. This particular occasion was the first time i remember actually observing kimchi being made, and I realized it’s pretty physically demanding. So my grandmother and 2 of her friends and her ajum-ma were mixing up all the stuff in large plastic containers, with newspapers all over the floor to protect it from all the splattering. They themselves had quite a bit of kimchi “juice” on themselves, so at first I thought it was blood, and I also thought that it wasn’t kimchi but maybe they were cutting up some fresh meat.

I like kimchi, and it seems like alot of other people do, too. My favorite kimchi is the type that is sealed in small individual packages you can buy at convenience stores or supermarkets. I like things better that come in individual packages; its like the psychological comfort of me knowing it’s individually packaged makes it taste better. I’m not really into home-made kimchi, and I think the main reason is the inconsistency. As you may or may not know, Kimchi is a fermented food, so there could be any number of internal or external factors that could affect the outcome of the final edible product. There could be fluctuations in the temperature, or the container may not be letting out enough of the gases given off in the fermentation process. . .I know there’s special refrigerators now that control the temperature during fermentation, but still, it can’t beat a factory controlled by a large corporation producing batches of kimchi maybe a hundred times larger than someone could make at home. No, it can’t beat their consistency. I’ve had some kimchi that I thought tasted excellent at certain restaurants(which made the kimchi themselves), but then the next time I went there, they had a different batch of kimchi, which was still pretty OK, but was disappointing since I had come with expectations established from my prior visit. In that sense, I think if you were to try kimchi only once in your lifetime, home-made kimchi would be best. I remember one particular time when I had this crazy kimchi which had been fermented for 2 years, buried under the ground. This kimchi’s red was super duper deep; almost purple. If I could have kimchi only once in my lifetime, that would be it.

The thing I like most about kimchi is its color. Red is my favorite color, and kimchi can pretty much cover any shade of red. With white rice, of course, it looks fantastic.

Likewise, this painting was more about the aesthetics of making kimchi. I really got a violent impression when I saw my grandmother and her friends making kimchi. The vigorous mixing and the bright reds and dark reds and almost neon reds . . .yup, they had me seeing red.

Once again, the masked animal figure represents myself, as a second-generation Korean-Canadian conveniently disguised from Korean society, observing a part of my somewhat distant mother-culture.

The thing I hate about kimchi is that is has tiny shrimp that have been pre-fermented and then re-fermented in the kimchi making process. If you look closely into kimchi, you can see their black, beady eyes. 

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2009 Casper Kang