To experience lack is to be reminded of the boundaries of the self, of others. Lacking realizes the unassailable distance between you and everything you don’t and won’t ever have. Therein to lack enlivens desire, or does desire require a lack of something? Kang’s latest installation stages spatial, material, and sensual transformations that enforce and dissolve boundaries, collapsing and expanding distances. The whirling, six-by-eight-foot mechanical drum casts kaleidoscopic patterns of light and shade across the space, visualizing the dynamic process occurring imperceptibly across the bolts of large-format film hung like ribbons from the ceiling. It’s true, I don’t fully understand what I’m seeing or hearing—ethereal chimes and sounds that mimic someone reciting poetry accompany the rhythmic rotations—but I want to all the more for that. Perhaps it’s this yearning that the artist aims to bear out for herself, for others.

*A previous version of this review misidentified the sound of a woman’s voice reciting English and Korean poetry and has been updated.

Lotus L. Kang: Azaleas
Commonwealth and Council
3006 W, 7th St., STE 220
Los Angeles, CA 90005