Lee Kang So : Emergence and Dissolution Solo exhibition at the Lotte Museum of Art
Nothing is ever fully revealed, and nothing ever fully disappears.
Lee Kang So turns his gaze to the moments when those boundaries begin to waver. The visible and the invisible, reality and image, emergence and dissolution do not exist in opposition; rather, they continuously intersect, generating new meanings. Instead of offering a definitive answer, his work opens up alternative ways of perceiving the world, inviting audiences to complete each work through their own senses and experiences as they move within its flow.
Coinciding with Frieze Seoul, when the global art world turns its attention to the city, the LOTTE Museum of Art presents a major exhibition spotlighting Lee Kang So, a representative figure in Korean contemporary art. Rather than simply showcasing his best-known works or retracing his historical career, this exhibition seeks to revisit the vital currents that have shaped Korean contemporary art through the artist’s decades of experimentation and philosophical reflection, sharing their enduring significance with today’s audiences.
Long before many of the artistic languages now taken for granted had become familiar, Lee was already exploring them. Working fluidly across a diverse range of media, he consistently prioritized process over outcome, and becoming over completion. In his practice, an artwork is never a fixed conclusion, but a space where time, action, relationships, and perception accumulate; each brushstroke and trace serves as a living record of that unfolding process.
This exhibition therefore goes beyond presenting finished works, inviting audiences to experience the active processes and sustained times of experimentation embedded within them. The exhibition begins in a space where reality and image converge, leading audiences on a journey in which painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance unfold as a single, continuous flow. Though diverse in medium, these works are bound by a unified thread of thought, where past experiments encounter the present moment to generate new meanings. Rather than remaining at the level of mere appreciation of individual works, the exhibition becomes a site where audiences actively experience the very process by which ideas emerge and expand.
At the end of the exhibition, art once again meets life. Through moments of lingering, observing, and conversation, the works extend beyond the gallery walls, continuing to generate new meanings within the audience’s own memories and perceptions. What emerges and dissolves is not merely form. Our ways of gaze, experiences, memories, and relationships are also constantly being generated and transformed.
Emergence and Dissolution reexamines Lee Kang So’s practice through a contemporary lens. The experiments he began decades ago are never confined to a particular moment in history; each encounter with a new era and a new audience gives rise to fresh meanings, awakening alternative ways of sensing the world. His work is not a finished result, but an ongoing process continually reinterpreted through its encounter with audiences. Through this exhibition, we do not simply encounter the works of a single artist; we follow the accumulated traces of time and experimentation within his practice, witnessing how that movement continues to unfold in this very moment.
