When Korean art is introduced to the international art world, the first movement that often comes to mind is Dansaekhwa. Artists such as Park Seo-Bo, Yun Hyong-keun, Chung Sang-Hwa, Ha Chong-Hyun, and Lee Ufan have come to represent a dominant international narrative of Korean modern and contemporary art over the past decade.
 
Dansaekhwa is clearly one of the major achievements of Korean modernist painting. Through its explorations of materiality, repetition, performativity, flatness, and reductive form, Dansaekhwa established a distinctive Korean development of modernism within the international art world. Yet the history of Korean art cannot be explained by Dansaekhwa alone.
 
During the same period, and often alongside it, another current expanded the form and concept of art in an entirely different direction. That current was Korean Experimental Art of the 1960s and 1970s.
 
This is where Lee Kang So’s work assumes particular significance. If Dansaekhwa represents one of the culminating moments of Korean modernist painting, Lee’s practice reveals another transition through which Korean art moved toward the conditions of contemporary art. He understood the artwork not as a completed material object, but as an open process that emerges through action, time, place, situation, and audience participation.

The exhibition currently on view at the Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY),《Lee Kang So: A Field of Becoming》, offers an opportunity to revisit this alternative genealogy.
 
Presented at the Atrium & Gallery of KCCNY from May 13 through June 20, 2026, the exhibition surveys Lee’s artistic practice from the 1970s to the present through a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance.
 
Lee Kang So is widely regarded as one of the most significant figures in the history of Korean Experimental Art. Throughout his career, he has refused to confine himself to a single medium or stylistic category, instead understanding art as a continuous process of transformation and becoming.
 
The exhibition title,《A Field of Becoming》, encapsulates this perspective. It suggests that Lee’s art is less concerned with the completion of fixed forms than with the processes through which traces, actions, time, reality, and images continuously emerge and evolve.

What matters in Lee’s work is not the representation of an object, but the process through which an object becomes an image and then dissolves into a trace. Recurring motifs in his paintings—ducks, deer, boats, and clouds—are not intended as realistic depictions of specific subjects.
 
Rather, they function as mediators that invite reflection on the relationship between existence and perception. Appearing and disappearing, becoming distinct and then fading away, these images encourage viewers to experience the gap between image and reality.
 
This artistic inquiry was already evident in Lee’s experimental works of the 1970s. One of his best-known works, Disappearance – Bar in the Gallery (1973), transformed Myeongdong Gallery in Seoul into a tavern, offering visitors makgeolli and food while making their presence, conversations, and lingering interactions part of the work itself.
 
Rather than producing a conventional painting or sculpture, Lee placed everyday space, audience participation, and a time-based event at the center of the work. At the time, this was a remarkably radical gesture within the Korean art scene, challenging the boundaries between art and reality, audience and artwork, exhibition space and everyday life.

This is also why Lee’s work continues to resonate today. His practice does not rely on direct representations of Korean identity. Instead, it engages with concerns comparable to those explored in conceptual art, performance art, and process-based practices that emerged internationally from the 1960s onward.
 
Lee treated art not as a fixed material outcome, but as an open process unfolding through action, time, relationships, and situations. In this sense, his work provides an important point of connection through which Korean art moves beyond the pictorial achievements of modernism and enters the conditions of contemporary art.
 
The growing international interest in Korean Experimental Art also provides important context for understanding this exhibition. Co-organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York,《Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s》was a landmark exhibition that brought Korean Experimental Art into an international framework.
 
The exhibition examined how a generation of young artists sought new artistic forms and attitudes amid the rapid social transformations of postwar Korea, moving beyond the limitations of existing artistic institutions.

Within this broader context, Lee Kang So cannot be understood merely as a representative of a particular generation. His work demonstrates that Korean art developed not only through the flatness and materiality associated with Dansaekhwa, but also through actions, events, time, place, and audience participation.

If Dansaekhwa represents one axis of Korean modernist art, the experimental lineage to which Lee belongs represents another axis that anticipated the conditions of Korean contemporary art.
 
For this reason, Lee’s New York exhibition carries significance beyond that of a conventional overseas presentation. It marks a moment in which Korean art introduces to the global art world not only the international success of its established modernist painting, but also histories of experimentation and critical inquiry that have often remained underrepresented.
 
Lee Kang So’s work reminds us that the history of Korean art cannot be reduced to a single movement, style, or market category. At the same time, it demonstrates how Korean Experimental Art continues to offer new possibilities for interpretation within contemporary global art history.
 
《A Field of Becoming》ultimately opens another temporal dimension of Korean art through Lee Kang So’s work. It is not the time of completed forms, but the time of continuous transformation and becoming. Within this field, Korean Experimental Art invites us to reconsider, beyond Dansaekhwa, another crucial transition through which Korean art moved from modern art toward contemporary art.

Lee Kang So
 
Born in Daegu in 1943, Lee Kang So graduated from the Department of Painting at Seoul National University in 1965. Emerging as a central figure in the Korean Experimental Art movement of the 1970s, he has developed a multifaceted practice encompassing painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and performance.
 
Lee understands art not as a fixed material outcome, but as an open process unfolding through time, action, perception, and relationships. From his early performances and installations to his later paintings and sculptures, his work has consistently explored the relationships between reality and image, presence and trace, becoming and disappearance. In recent years, Lee has received renewed international attention as Korean Experimental Art has increasingly entered global institutional and scholarly discourse.

Korean Cultural Center New York
 
The Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY) is a leading institution dedicated to introducing Korean arts and culture to audiences in the United States. Through visual arts exhibitions, performances, film screenings, literary programs, and educational initiatives, KCCNY serves as an important bridge between Korean culture and international audiences.
 
The Atrium & Gallery, where this exhibition is presented, functions as a key venue for introducing Korean modern and contemporary art to New York audiences. Located in the heart of Manhattan, the space provides an important platform for presenting Korean artists within an international context while fostering cultural exchange and global engagement.
 

 
Exhibition Information
 
Exhibition Title:《Lee Kang So: A Field of Becoming》
Artist: Lee Kang So
Dates: May 13 – June 20, 2026
Opening Reception: May 12, 2026, 6–8 PM
Venue: Atrium & Gallery at the Korean Cultural Center New York
Address: 122 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016, USA
Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 10 AM–6 PM; Saturday, 11 AM–5 PM
Closed: Sunday and Monday
Website:
https://www.koreanculture.org/gallery-korea/2026/05/lee-kang-so
https://www.koreanculture.org/exhibition-visual-arts