Installation view
of “Lee Kang So: Where the Wind Meets the
Water” ©MMCAThe National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) presents a solo exhibition by Lee Kang So,
titled “Lee Kang So: Where the Wind Meets the Water” through April 13, 2025, at
its Seoul branch.
The exhibition provides a critical
reevaluation of the distinctive body of work produced over six decades by Lee
Kang So (b. 1943), a seminal figure in the evolution of contemporary Korean
art. As a leading artist in the Korean art scene, Lee Kang So has
continued to carry out conceptual experimentation regarding the perception and
recognition of images.
The exhibition title, “Where the Wind Meets
the Water,” was inspired by the work of a Song dynasty Neo-Confucian scholar,
Shao Yong (邵雍, 1011–1077), titled Song of a ‘Clear Night (淸夜吟).’ In his work, Shao Yong metaphorically describes a state of
enlightenment upon encountering a new world.
Shao Yong’s title encapsulates the oeuvre
of Lee Kang So, who has long questioned the many different ways we see the
world around us and continued his conceptual experimentation regarding
perception in a variety of media such as painting, sculpture, installation,
printmaking, video, and photography.
Installation view
of “Lee Kang So: Where the Wind Meets the
Water” ©MMCAThe
exhibition is organized around two questions that Lee has been consistently
exploring since the 1970s. The first question revolves around the artist’s
skepticism concerning his own recognition as a creator and as a subject
encountering the world. The exhibition traces the artist’s trajectory of
experimenting with intentionally excluding or questioning the act of creation,
not only through new media such as video and events but also across various
traditional media like painting, printmaking, and sculpture.
The
second question involves the nature of the objects as viewed by both the artist
and viewers. The artist’s critical examination of objective reality and its
representation through images began with Disappearance
(1973) at the first solo exhibition at Myeongdong Gallery. Since then, Lee has
continually interrogated the boundary between the real and the virtual,
navigating between text (or work titles), objects, and imagery.
Installation view
of “Lee Kang So: Where the Wind Meets the
Water” ©MMCARather than pushing direct theoretical concepts, his methodology offers viewers—both participants and observers—myriad possibilities of perception, thereby opening up infinite possibilities, like a multiverse, not a single universe. At the same time, Lee’s work suggests that there is no single truth within the diverse experiences and memories that shape our world and that everything creates a virtual spacetime within the world they perceive.
Ji Yeon Lee has been working as an editor for the media art and culture channel AliceOn since 2021 and worked as an exhibition coordinator at samuso (now Space for Contemporary Art) from 2021 to 2023.
