Seoul, b. 1985

Dong Hyuk Lee explores the spaces and objects that once reflected people’s beliefs and origins, but at some point were abandoned and have come to wither away. Lee imbues his experiences and memories onto various objects such as chairs, glasses, pianos, and crosses that have been left in ruins and paints landscapes and portraits that emerge from the stories he gathered on these objects. As such is his process, the space and objects he captures first reveal the artist’s beliefs and subjective rendering. On the other hand, Lee has experimented with and immersed himself in various compositional elements such as symbolic figures, signs, and colors in the pictorial dimension so that his work is not composed solely of the subjective. Continuing this artistic exploration, his recent works embody the act of “seeing” itself, which reflects the artist’s will to examine the multi-layered nuances of the operation of recognition and identification of the object’s significance within the methodology of painting.