Lee, GanU Exhibition

Able Fine Art NY Gallery

poster for Lee, GanU Exhibition

This event has ended.

Lee, GanU is recognized as one of the most popular and influential contemporary artists in Korea. The exhibition features mixed media paintings with Korean stamps that have been described as allegories of memory, intrinsically linked to time, life and nature. Lee, Kwan-Woo treats Korean stamps as objects, and creates large-scale pixilated assemblages that develop into a relief-like surface.

In the series titled, “Condensed,” Lee, GanU combines hundreds of tiny stamps and seals of various shapes and sizes, each uniquely carved in the traditional Korean style, into large-scale pieces such as the figure of Buddha, and abstract compositions. With the exception of the figure pieces, he pursues organic movement across the board simply using the Korean stamps. The engravings and symbols of stamps carry a sense of personalized identity, personhood, and great emotional and historical weight that by plainly laying them on the canvas without the pressure of trying to create a particular image, he is able to compose a natural rhythm. He needs not to force a story or composition for the antiquity of the stamps trace them all. Only then can we see the metaphor of name, memory and time to the human mind connected with the copied seal of transparent material which out of the matter reappear.

Reflecting on the traditional use of Korean seals to officiate documents and works, Lee, GanU also raises questions about issues of identity and authenticity in the post industrial digital world. As art critic Jill Conner states: “It is currently unknown what trace of any global society will look like in the future now that the preservation of documentation is mostly digital. Lee, Kwan-Woo focuses on the historic displacement of the cultural seal-stamp wrought by computer technology.”

Media

Schedule

from September 01, 2011 to September 24, 2011

Opening Reception on 2011-09-01 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Lee, GanU

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