Painting the Horizon: Chounhwan Lee

SEOJUNG ART is pleased to announce Lee Choun Hwan's solo exhibition Painting the Horizon from April 11 to May 6, 2022. The exhibition is designed to reflect on both the big and small changes that can be observed in the 40 some years of Lee’s artistic career, focusing on his Light+Grain series. After presenting Light+Grain(1989), which born through traditional oriental painting techniques such as sumukhwa (ink wash painting) and sumuk damchae (colored ink painting), his current Light+Grain series represents a personal pinnacle for Lee as it was achieved after much experimentation and trial and error on the artist’s part.

The early Light+Grain series epitomized Lee Choun Hwan’s patience and perseverance. Layers were forged as the artist stamped the paints and later stacked, dried, and stacked them a second time on the canvas. This process allowed the paintings to display the characteristics of their physical properties, while communicating a sense of flow and rhythm through the three-dimensional feel of paint lumps and capturing a unique visual illusion for viewers. The phenomenon of diverse colors dynamically harmonizing without colliding was gradually alleviated in the mid-stage. While showing a transitioning process to abstraction, there is a clear dynamism created by contrast and collision among highly intense colors. This dynamism takes on a lyrical character as boundaries in the canvas are blurred by the painter’s brush.

The word “horizon” in the exhibition title of Painting the Horizon refers to the surface of the Earth, which appears flat when viewed from a certain point. The horizon represents the “line that is forged where the water surface meets the sky.” Earlier, the artist presented his monochromatic Light+Grain (1989), using of sumukhwa. Later, Lee innovated his contrasting of passionate colors and techniques, making his more recent works imbued with lyrical colors. They all started with the purpose of giving form to the light reflected on the waves, but at the same time embody Lee’s pure intention to paint that which cannot be seen by connecting the boundaries of earth and sky. This provides a comprehensive view of the artist’s fondness of a vast nature that cannot be captured in one glance, and his perspective on art which led him to make this the central theme of his works. Viewers are invited to search for the ideal form of nature that Lee Choun Hwan sought by visualizing a horizon where the ends of earth touch the boundaries of the sea.