A Piece of: Lee Hyungwook

Collected Impressions, Formed Ideas

Hwang Jungin (Independent Curator) 

Lee Hyungwook changes and distorts the basic physical features of everyday objects. Through this visual method, he questions the belief that human ideas, formed as we see and experience things, are absolute. His fourth solo exhibition, held three years after 2009, reflects on his time studying abroad over the past two years and shows his attempt to answer these questions. 

Return to Physical Reality

Lee’s earlier works are known for exaggerated and distorted forms that create strange and conflicting scenes. He used computer graphics based on photographs to create these images. Since sculptures exist in real space and create physical tension, computer graphics allowed him to explore many illusions and strongly express his view of the world. By stretching proportions or combining opposing objects, he challenged fixed ideas and suggested compromise between conflicts. 

In this exhibition, however, he moves away from virtual images. Instead, he uses real objects that people can see and touch. He reveals their most basic qualities directly on their surfaces. The exhibition title 《같은 선상에서》 suggests this straightforward way of looking at things. 

He still uses familiar objects and creates unfamiliar situations by removing or increasing their original functions. In the past, he questioned fixed ideas through photographic illusion. Now, he shows that direct sensory experience itself shapes ideas. He seems concerned that turning imagined worlds into perfect physical forms might create another rigid belief and distort truth again. For this reason, he no longer depends on virtual space, where everything can be fully controlled. Instead, he works in the real world, where light, air, wind, and smell introduce chance and change. 

The artist recreates his first personal impression of an object within its physical limits. He then presents it so viewers can think about it through their own experiences. 

For example, one work uses a thick rubber container with a 50cm diameter. Lee cuts a lid slightly larger than the opening and seals it tightly. The container looks like a solid block of rubber. He ignores its usual function of storage and focuses instead on its size, material, and weight. 

Another work uses a sofa. He attaches a wooden frame shaped like a chair on top of it. The added structure may seem unnecessary, but it depends on the sofa’s form and highlights the minimum elements needed to recognise the object. 

Transferred Impressions, Expanded Awareness

In another work, his focus moves beyond an object to the space around it. A rectangular metal air duct stands in a corner of the exhibition hall, which is also a large grey concrete rectangle. The duct seems to mirror the structure of the space. Inside it, a flickering circular fluorescent light connects the grey room and the silver duct. Here, the true subject is not the duct but the space itself. The duct and the light serve as tools to express his impressions of that space. 

While the earlier works express impressions through the physical traits of single objects, this piece shows that awareness can extend into the surrounding environment. Ideas are not limited to one object but can grow to include space itself. 

Lee shows how a person living in the real world forms ideas from sensory impressions. Each individual gathers and builds impressions differently, based on personal experience. These impressions shape thought. By showing this process, he questions the certainty and meaning of absolute ideas. 

His recent works focus less on whether ideas are true and more on how they are formed. He once used distortion in virtual space to question fixed beliefs. Now, he observes real objects in an unpredictable world and expresses his honest impression in simple forms. Through this shift, he explores the basic process by which ideas come into being.