Renowned contemporary artist Lee Kang So, whose career spans over six decades, brings his latest exhibition, Where the Wind Meets the Water, to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul. Running from November 1, 2024, through April 13, 2025, this exhibition revisits Lee’s distinctive body of work and his conceptual explorations into the perception of reality, objects, and identity in art.

Inspired by the Neo-Confucian scholar Shao Yong’s Song of a Clear Night, the exhibition takes viewers on a journey into Lee’s evolving art practice, characterized by his use of diverse media, including painting, sculpture, video, and installation. Lee’s approach challenges traditional understandings of image-making by unveiling hidden relationships between objects and their representations. He famously articulated his artistic philosophy at the 1975 Paris Biennial, where he described his method as one that “reveals the normally invisible order and relationships within the universe.”

The exhibition is divided into two primary themes, reflecting Lee’s artistic questions: the artist’s role as a creator and the dynamic nature of objects. Lee’s early experimentation with alternative media, which began in the 1970s during his participation in contemporary art movements such as the Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, is on full display. During this period, he disrupted conventional boundaries by working with printmaking, video, and performance, positioning his art as a challenge to Western modernist norms and embracing a uniquely Korean perspective.

Gallery 3 showcases works from the 1970s to the 1980s, focusing on Lee’s exploration of artistic intent and viewer perception. In pieces such as Disappearance (1973) and Discussion (1994/2024), Lee delves into the artist’s relationship with creation. His innovative methods, like unraveling canvas threads and using his own body in art-making, convey his intent to remove direct authorship, leaving the viewer to interpret the work freely.

In the 1980s, Lee expanded his work with abstract and figurative painting, gradually introducing recognizable symbols, such as houses and animals, in fluid brushstrokes. Here, he challenged the notion of fixed meanings by presenting motifs that leave room for personal interpretation. His figurative works illustrate an interest in transformation, echoing his belief that an artwork’s meaning should not be confined by the artist’s intent but rather shaped by the viewer’s experiences and emotions.

Gallery 4 shifts focus to Lee’s engagement with the concept of reality and the limitations of objective representation. His piece Untitled-7522 (1975/remade 2018) presents a broken stone alongside a photograph of the unbroken stone, encouraging viewers to reflect on the distinctions between the actual object, its image, and their mental perception of it. This juxtaposition questions the nature of reality and how each “stone”—the physical object, its image, and the mental impression—holds a different identity in the minds of viewers.

Throughout his career, Lee has continuously revisited the same images across different media. His exploration of reproducibility and reinterpretation underscores his conviction that even identical images can shift in meaning based on viewer context and experience. Lee’s works, with their recurring motifs and open-ended forms, invite viewers into a space where reality becomes fluid, allowing them to project their own emotions and perspectives onto the artwork.

This exhibition, Where the Wind Meets the Water, is a tribute to Lee’s enduring impact on Korean contemporary art and his role in pushing the boundaries of traditional image-making. Through his unique approach, Lee not only engages with philosophical questions about reality and existence but also provides a deeply personal space where viewers can explore their perceptions and relationships with the world around them. As they move through the exhibition, visitors are encouraged to become co-creators, finding new meanings and connections in each piece.

Sayart / Maria Kim, sayart2022@gmail.com