Lee Jin Woo

Being absorbed by matter, making one with it, disappearing in it, going elsewhere… For Lee Jin Woo, creation is meditation. His work process is long, physically demanding and repetitive, like a prayer recited over and over again. The spectator is in front of a dark bark landscape, a rock landscape or an almost transparent aerial one. A veil seems to float, luring but impenetrable. The eye lingers, tries to go through the surface, finally it is also caught in the matter and taken elsewhere…

Arte povera, minimalism, relation to void… Lee Jin Woo’s work falls in line – with his specific signature – into Korean contemporary tradition. What matters most here is the doing, with a modest matter, in dialog with nature in its widest sense. The heritage of the generation of Dansaekwha artists intersects with Lee Jin Woo’s knowledge of impressionism and its discourse through light. Just like the eponymous little flower, yellow and with a discrete perfume, Eranthis announces spring, the beginning of a new cycle. Storms will settle, earth will open to let young shoots emerge, colour will unfold. Little by little, light will penetrate the cavities of the rock.