Yunsung Lee (b. 1985, Korea)
Yunsung Lee is a contemporary Korean artist who graduated from the College of Fine Arts at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. He is currently active in the art scenes of Seoul, Tokyo, Europe, and the United States. His artistic practice primarily revolves around painting, extending into sculpture and mixed media. He has consistently developed series such as "NU," "Torso," and "Zodiac," establishing a highly recognizable visual language. The artist has held solo exhibitions at international institutions such as DOOSAN Gallery New York, MUSEUM WAVE, and Gallery Joyana (Marseille, France). He has also received the Doosan Artist Award and a New York residency, with his works collected by institutions such as the DOOSAN ART CENTER.
Yunsung Lee's creative core stems from a reinterpretation of body art and contemporary image culture. He uses the "torso" from classical sculpture as a starting point, viewing the body as a visual unit that can be dismantled and reassembled. By integrating Japanese anime, popular culture, and digital image aesthetics, his works feature vivid, fluid, and highly sensuous styles. In his art, the body serves as both a vessel of desire and a site for viewing mechanisms, oscillating between pure aesthetics and cultural symbols, thus challenging the boundaries between high art and subcultures.
In recent works, such as "Between the Frames: Fragment of Torso," Lee further breaks away from the single-panel structure of traditional painting through multi-panel and fragmented canvas formats. This approach dismantles the body into different segments that transcend the boundaries of the canvas. Viewers are prompted to actively reassemble the image, creating a visual experience that hovers between continuity and discontinuity. This structure echoes the narrative panels of comics and the layered nature of digital imagery, allowing painting to simultaneously convey multiple temporal and spatial dimensions, thereby redefining the way contemporary painting is viewed.
In the contemporary age of highly circulated images, Yunsung Lee's creations not only respond to the historical tradition of body art but also actively engage with the mechanisms of contemporary visual culture. Through strategies of "fragmentation" and "reconstruction," he explores the relationship between body, image, and perception, while also proposing the possibility of painting as a continuously evolving medium.
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