Donghoon Rhee

Donghoon Rhee sculpts—and then paints what he has sculpted. “I began making sculpture as a way to think about how to paint,” he explains. His practice follows a distinctive cyclical process: he creates sculptural forms, observes them like still lifes, and then renders them onto canvas. Through this approach, Rhee actively explores the boundary between painting and sculpture.
In recent years, he has focused on the dynamic movements of K-pop idols, capturing the energy, form, and chromatic intensity of fleeting gestures in both carved wood and painted images.

Rhee received his BFA from Kyung Hee University and his MFA in Formative Arts from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. He has held solo exhibitions in Korea and abroad, including at Gallery SP in Seoul and Various Small Fires (VSF) in Los Angeles. In 2025, he was selected as an artist-in-residence at Geumcheon Art Factory, operated by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.

Rhee’s work begins with the materiality of sculpture. He carves and refines wood to depict fleeting gestures drawn from K-pop choreography, translating the gestures, bodily forms, and colors of costumes and strands of hair into three-dimensional form. He then revisits the finished sculpture and translates it into paintings. Through the act of redrawing his sculptural forms, he delves into how form, color, and material texture are perceived and translated across mediums.

Rhee cites a remark by American post-minimalist artist Richard Tuttle as a key influence: that he ‘collects not to own, but to see better.’ For Rhee, the act of making and then painting a sculpture is a personal methodology for observing in depth—and in a different way. The artist noted that he “finds the motivation to continue when he notices a form or color emerging in a new way, or when he senses a shift in how he perceives the material.”

At this year’s Kiaf, Rhee presents two wooden sculptures of K-pop idols created in 2022, along with new paintings completed three years later in response to those earlier works. “Looking at the sculptures again after time had passed,” he says, “I began to question how my perception of the subject had changed.” In encountering these works, viewers are invited to follow Rhee’s shifting gaze between sculpture and painting—and to witness how familiar imagery from pop culture can take on entirely new artistic forms.

Attention, Acrylic on elm, 202x66x52cm, 2022