Lee Kun-Yong

Born 1942 in Sariwon, North Korea

Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

Lee Kun-Yong is a member of Korea’s first avant-garde generation. He continuously attempts to establish a new relationship between the body and the space it occupies through the reenactment of everyday life. Using his body as an index and medium, he sets limits related to the state of his body, such as arm length, stride, and height, and records the traces of its movement on the canvas. As such, many of his paintings and works are named ‘body scape’, reflecting his experimental practice of integrating his body. He has been performing routine and repetitive actions such as walking, eating, and counting in the form of a performance, and for this reason, he has been known as ‘Korea’s first-generation performance artist’ or ‘a pioneer of Korean avant-garde art’.

His explorations extend to the relationship between the artist’s own body, the viewer’s gaze, and the space in which his work is exhibited. The artist stands with his back to the canvas and draws behind the canvas, even with the canvas beside him, moving only his arms. The result that the audience sees is the trace of the brush passing through the canvas, but the artist painted the painting without looking at the canvas. Unlike many artists in art history who have tried to change the objects, materials, or methods of expression for a long time in art history, he questioned the physical location of the artist’s work and changed it by questioning the physical location of the artist and in doing so, (Method of Drawing) was able to be born.

He says, “The Body is the most important and essential artistic medium. That the body of an artist is indeed capable of being the most effective and direct medium. That is my unyielding belief and intuition.” By endlessly questioning the essence of art, he chooses drawing, one of the fundamental acts of an artist and records the process of performing it thus revealing the fact that art exists even in the simplest and most common activities.

His major solo exhibitions include Pace Gallery New York(2023) and Hong Kong(2022), Gallery Hyundai(2021), Busan Museum of Art(2019), 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney(2018), and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon(2014). Group exhibitions include the monumental Paris Biennale in 1973, which marked his first overseas exhibition, as well as Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art(2021, 2016), MMCA Gwacheon(2019. 2016, 2015), National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo(2019), Jeonbuk Museum of Art(2018), Daegu Art Museum(2018, 2011), Yangpyeong Art Museum(2017), Suwon iPark Museum of Art(2017), Busan Museum of Art(2016), Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan(2012), etc. His solo exhibition was held at 313 Art Project Paris, and is participating in group exhibition, ‘Experimental Art in South Korea, 1960s-70s’ in Guggenheim New York until January, 2024.