The show’s original incarnation was the culmination of the artist’s residency in Critical Race Studies at Michigan State University’s Lansing campus from August 2020 through May 2021. Fastening onto the campus’s most prominent landmark—the statue of Michigan State’s mascot, the “Spartan,” originally cast in terra cotta by its commissioned sculptor, Leonard Jungwirth in 1943, and replaced by a bronze replica in 2005—Kwak set upon unraveling the underside of this aspirational icon.

The first work I walked up to in the gallery was a mask (in cold-cast nickel, pigmented resin, wax and acrylic) in the most literal sense, the articulation of the human features (setting to one side their already suppressed expression) beaten down within the layers of the original negative casting—giving further emphasis to Jungwirth’s cliff-like forehead—rendering the superstructure of the ‘Spartan’ mask as much as the mask itself. Jungwirth’s explicitly schematized Spartan hews closely to what is essentially a proto-fascist model (e.g., Arno Breker); and Kwak’s sculptures and monoprints implicitly unpack and deconstruct its cultural architecture and foundations.

The extensions become pivot points for excavation and regeneration. Both casts and monoprints—what appear to be rubbings from the castings elaborated into variously configured black-and-white and pigmented impressions—give some emphasis to hands, feet, muscular joints from torso to arms or legs, and their instrumentality. ‘Prayer’ figures in the titles of more than one piece here. In the ash-gray reverse of one such Spartan Skin cast (Prayer to Leonard Jungwirth, all works 2021), and the figure’s left foot (Left Foot with Pennies), we see the impressions of pennies left by fans and players for luck—the rust-bronze-pigmented Foot draped over its armature as if both saddle and springboard for its aspirations. In Prayers, such collective ‘impressions’ are recomposed into a mottled turquoise green monoprint, as if projecting such a porous, ‘pennied’ skin into the sky itself.

Young Joon Kwak, Divine Ruin (My Face), 2021. Courtesy Commonwealth and Council. Photo by Paul Salveson.

Hand in Helmet gives way to a less abstracted Spartan Booty, its undulant cheeks confessing vulnerability (and conceivably, pollutions); and—its reversal—the Hand on Groin with the oversized hand resting close to the covered genitals. Yet Kwak’s cast gives more emphasis to the hand, amplifying both its vulnerability and transformative capability. Similarly, Kwak’s casting of the Spartan’s Torso, detached and reclining on its armature, transforms Jungwirth’s six-piston machined abdomen into something slightly more naturalistic. And this is just the start—as Kwak’s bejeweled Buxom Sparty Breastplate makes plain, shrinking Sparty’s already trim waist, paring his pectorals and swelling his breasts.

Spartan Ruin is really a celebration of both ruination, excavation and transformation. Out of Spartan ruins (the title of one of the monoprints) emerge fresh perspectives (e.g., Pillar with Helmet, or Sun On the Horizon), from which transformational vision can emerge (a foot or similar extension transformed into a Mermaid Booty). That includes the artist themself, transforming the fragmented Spartan impression and mask into a cast of the artist’s own face with bejeweled mask on its convex side suspended upside down above the gallery floor (Divine Ruin) , already prepared to celebrate its own obliteration.