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Category Archives: Lee Hyung-koo

Pseudo-scientist inventing reality

07-Nov-07

Pseudo-scientist inventing reality

Lee Hyungkoo: The Homo Species Korean Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 10 June - 21 November 2007 In a Biennale dominated by the theme of war, AIDS, destruction and desolation, it was comforting to find some of the country pavilions conforming to national stereotypes. The French pavilion dissected a love letter written by a rather callous man terminating a relationship with his mistress. The British pavilion, as befits a nation of shopkeepers, used the event as an opportunity for retail therapy: outside was a stall selling Tracy Emin memorabilia -- shopping bags and stick-on tattoos. The Koreans? Plastic surgery, obviously. Lee Hyungkoo's work in the Korean pavilion was influenced by his sense of physical inferiority when studying abroad in the US, surrounded by so ...
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Kimchi juice: the art medium of the future

30-Sep-06
I went to the "Give me Shelter" exhibition at the Union Gallery one lunchtime this week, as it's only 15 minutes walk from my office. I'll be going back again. Possibly the easiest works to relate to are the biggest and the smallest. Hyungkoo Lee's skeletal coyote and roadrunner occupied a whole room, atmospherically lit. As for the smallest exhibits -- well, you could almost miss them: Dongwook Lee's tiny human figures, only a couple of inches high at most, mounted on little shelves here and there. The most sinister was a nude male figure with arms where the legs should be. There's some large-scale sculptural work (Osang Gwon - above right) which looks like ceramics but is in ...
Also filed in Baik Hyunjhin, Event reports and reviews, Give me Shelter, Lee Dong-wook, Osang Gwon, Suejin Chung, Union Gallery | | Comments (0) »

“Give me Shelter” at the Union Gallery

26-Sep-06
Thanks to Peter Corbishley who told me about this exhibition over a soju or two at the Anglo-Korean Society V&A evening. At the Union Gallery in Southwark there's an exhibition of works - sculpture and paintings - by five emerging Korean artists, Hyunjhin Baik, Suejin Chung, Osang Gwon, Dongwook Lee and Hyungkoo Lee. Above is a still from a Lee Hyung-koo installation - a skeletal Roadrunner in an eternal chase with a similarly skeletal Wile E. Coyote. Open six days a week (closed Sundays), the gallery website is here. As ever, it's now on my calendar, with links to the gallery site and google maps. Until November 28.
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