Lee Kiyoung

Cat’s cradle 05, Mixed media on Korean paper, ink cake, pigment, 60x120cm,2025

Journey Toward Creation

Discontinuous Surface

Before our eyes lies a single flat pictorial surface. Perhaps more precisely, it appears to be flat. In truth, however, it is a discontinuous surface where flatness is constructed: the traces of ink disappear into the successive layers of lime wash, followed by the linear incision of multiple layers of varnish on top, and filled with pigment for a texture. It is a well-known inlay technique. The surface before us is devoid of any intention to represent. Neither the traces of the ink nor the chromatic lines resemble anything, and they don’t seem to purpose an illusion. They simply hold the vestiges of processes that have unfolded across a long passage of time.

Cat’s cradle 06, Mixed media on Korean paper, ink cake, pigment, 55x45cm,2025

Saengdong: Life in Motion

When I first met Lee Kiyoung in 2016, he explained to me the genesis of his renowned Black Flower series, that his works, while originating from nature, became somewhat of a personal object through the techniques he applied. In other words, the works transcended being mere objects and became a part of the artist himself. Indeed, the works submitted to his solo exhibitions around that time appeared to have remained faithful to such descriptions: the traces of ‘black flowers’ were washed away with water, erased again and again, until emptied of much, approaching what would be called a state of ‘zero’.

Standing in a bright place 07, Mixed media on Korean paper, ink cake, pigment, 55×45cm (10호) ,2025

When I revisited his works 9 years later, I found out that his works were oriented toward the harmony – or tension – between presence and absence, order and freedom, structure and deconstruction. This shift has only intensified the artist’s performativity in practices. Let us take this observation to analyze his surface again – he seems to be drawn to moments of emotion. He begins from a memory in the past to write or draw with ink, and erases his work until he finds a certain emotion. Then he stops. This groundwork then transitions into a more deliberate phase of making. Guided by calculated composition, the artist creates several colored lines, employing an inlay technique to inscribe straight lines and filling them with pigment. Through countless sanding, the surface comes to appear as one seamless, continuous plane. This process demands precision far greater than expected, the physical tension of the artist’s body becomes embedded in the work. The lines are meticulously located and colored so that they appear from different perspectives. Because of this characteristic, the work continuously changes its image depending on the distance that the viewer takes. These colored lines are essential elements that allow the artwork to contain a sense of ‘gi-un saeng-dong’, a life force in motion.

Standing in a bright place 08, Mixed media on Korean paper, ink cake, pigment, 55×45cm (10호) ,2025

Open Dialectic

This exhibition presents about twenty works produced in such a manner. We find binary oppositions of order and freedom, or structure and deconstruction among them. It is through the retained tension between these binary opposites that let them co-exist, and ultimately let the works that contain them move forward to an absolute state. The tension shifts the works from being a static, two-dimensional product to an ongoing process of creating. We may understand this process in terms of dialectic. If the structure that forms the surface is our thesis, the process of erasure and emptying is our antithesis. The traces of these forces on the surface gather into the synthesis. This synthesis, however, is not a fixed harmony; it proceeds once again through thesis and antithesis toward another synthesis, forming an open dialectic. Lee’s works are reminiscent of Hegel in this sense, though his process repeats itself within the dialectical framework. In this sense, Lee’s surface is not a linear progression but a fluid synthesis, producing difference within repetition. What is written or drawn will be erased, and what is inscribed will be filled; on top of the traces of bodily movements that attempt to evoke emotions lie linear lines with tension, ever so calculated and carefully thought out, and eventually impose a geometric order. Yet, all these gestures ultimately resolve into flatness, into a single surface. What, then, does this painstakingly constructed surface signify? What meaning can be ascribed to the laborious, performative steps that bring the surface into being?

Installation View (1)

Surface as an Absolute State

Unlike the popular misconception that the two-dimensional is more fixed than the three-dimensional, the plane holds great potential for free imagination. As the text has maintained so far, a plane is an absolute state. The dialectical process that seems to move toward absence, toward nothingness, in fact leads us into a living stage of becoming. Life, too, may appear to proceed from generation toward extinction; yet along its long journey, we leave behind innumerable traces and inscriptions. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, encounters and partings – all such events, emotions, relationships, and memories of human existence become etched upon the body and upon the world in which we dwell. Lee Kiyoung’s works are created in the dialectical process, and, much like how several discontinuous planes exist in the surface, they point to us that final absence is at once presence, and disappearance is at once generation. That this is the very principle of life is what Lee’s artworks seem to say.

Sola Jung, Direcotr of curatorial bureau, SeMA​

Installation View (2)

GalleryMEME
3, Insadong 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
+82 2 733 8877

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