Installation view of 《Will There Be an Answer?》 ©Gallery Hyundai
Gallery Hyundai presents a solo exhibition 《Will There Be an Answer?》 by artist Woosung
Lee, on view through April 26. The artist works across drawing, painting, and
animation to explore the relationship between everyday life and art,
experimenting with the meaning of drawing and the expressive possibilities of
painting.
Rooted in his practice of translating
everyday life into painting, Lee’s work borrows from visual traditions such as
painting from life, minhwa (Korean folk painting), genre painting, and Minjung
Art. Through these references, he warmly captures the figures and sentiments of
contemporary life, establishing a distinctive position within Korean figurative
painting. Through scenes drawn from everyday life, Lee has unfolded narratives
of youth, solidarity, humor, travel, family, and queer romance.
While the artist has for some time focused
primarily on figures drawn from his surroundings, this exhibition turns its
attention toward landscape, a subject that encompasses layered experiences of
time and perception. The exhibition presents over forty works, including a
large-scale hanging painting, as well as a sound work composed of recordings
made in different sites.
Installation view of 《Will There Be an Answer?》 ©Gallery Hyundai
Over the past fifteen years, Lee has
focused on the “present” of the time and place in which we live. The “present”
Lee seeks to capture is not a fixed or fragmented moment that slips into the
past and fades into memory. Like an expression that remains unforgettable for a
lifetime, the “present” he constructs refers instead to a beautiful moment that
persists across the flow of past, present, and future.
Lee’s shift from figures to landscapes does
not signal a departure into a new world so much as an expansion of the
“present” that has long occupied his attention. If his earlier portraits
captured faces and silhouettes shaped through layered experiences, realities,
and relationships with others, the landscapes similarly function as expressions
of fleeting moments he perceives in the world, encompassing equally profound
emotions.
Installation view of 《Will There Be an Answer?》 ©Gallery Hyundai
The exhibition title 《Will There Be an Answer?》 asks a question
that may seem directed at another person, but it is not limited to a single
individual. It can also refer to the self in the present, the self in another
time, and to places where many layers of time and memory gather, along with the
people connected to them. Ultimately, it points to the interconnected “I” and
“we” that bind all of these elements together.
In an artist’s note written while preparing
this exhibition, Lee reflects: “From that day on, I looked at photographs of
landscapes and began painting them one by one. They are landscapes that remind
me of who we were then, and landscapes that connect to who I am now.” Before
these landscapes, quietly alive with poetic movement, the artist and perhaps we
as well find ourselves asking a question: Will there be an answer?
