Artists South Korea
Lee Bul (Korean: 이불) is a South Korean contemporary visual, installation and performance artist. She is known for her provocative and thought-provoking works that explore themes such as identity, technology, and the human body.
Lee Bul studied sculpture at Hongik University in Seoul and received her MFA from the same institution in 1987. She emerged as a prominent artist in the 1990s and has since exhibited her works in major museums and galleries around the world.
One of her most well-known works is "Majestic Splendor," a large-scale installation created in 1991 that features a series of sculptural forms made from materials such as fiberglass, wire, and beads. The work is inspired by the utopian visions of modernist architecture and design, but also incorporates elements of decay and fragmentation.
In recent years, Lee Bul has continued to create works that challenge and engage her viewers. For example, her 2017 installation "Willing To Be Vulnerable" features a series of abstract sculptures made from materials such as crystal, metal, and leather, which are arranged in a labyrinthine structure that viewers can walk through. The work explores themes of power and vulnerability, and encourages viewers to reflect on their own relationships with these concepts.
Lee Bul's works have been exhibited at major institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. She has also received numerous awards and honors, including the 2001 UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts and the 2017 Ho-Am Prize in the Arts.
Kim En Joong is a South Korean Dominican priest, painter, stained glass artist and renowned artist.
Representing abstract landscape painting, his non-figurative canvases, nourished by new technical notions of space and perspective, impose a change of scenery, the starting point of a quest for divine mystery.
In his pictorial works, what is striking is the impression of "liquidity" or "fluidity" of the pigments used. Thanks to delicate, pure and clear colours, Kim En Joong creates a fairytale-like spectacle by playing on the liveliness of the tones and the subtle contrasts.
Hyung Koo Kang is a contemporary Korean artist known for his hyper-realistic portraits of historical figures, media icons and ordinary people.
The master's work is imbued with empathy for strong-willed figures who have struggled with the hardships of life and history. Kana's deep-eyed portrait subjects gracefully reveal their inner worlds and the imprint of the times they have lived through.
Tschang-Yeul Kim is a South Korean abstraction artist, one of the most famous figures in the history of modern Korean art.
He lived most of his life in Paris, France, where he developed his own unique style of painting. Tschang-Yeul Kim painted paintings with a variety of water droplets that appear to protrude from the canvases as if the canvas were "crying," but are in fact optical illusions.
Kimsooja, real name Kim Soo-ja, is a South Korean and American media artist living and working in New York and Seoul.
After studying art in Seoul, Kimsooja studied lithography at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then apprenticed at the New York Museum of Modern Art.
Her early works used fabric, which quickly became her favorite medium: the artist began creating large textile collages. In her work, Kimsooja combines performance, film, photography and installation with the use of textiles, light and sound. The artist explores issues relating to the human condition, as well as addressing issues of aesthetics, culture, politics and the environment.
Dongi Lee is widely known Korean pop artist who works with popular cartoon-like images. He has attempted to show the result of cultural mixtures that combines two disparate codes such as pop characters like AtoMouse and abstract painting, which reflects our current society in which communication and harmony became a difficult task.
Nam June Paik (Korean: 백남준) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.
Anna Park is an AXA Art Award-winning South Korean and American artist. She is known for her scenes of unrestrained contemporary American life.
Anna Park's large-scale black and white charcoal drawings on paper and panels find a balance between abstraction and figurative painting.
Jae-Seong Ryu is a South Korean artist who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
He studied painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and has participated in exhibitions in Germany.
Jae-Seong Ryu's work is reality on one side and illusion on the other. Flat but at the same time spatial, ideal and material at the same time, abstract on the one hand and concrete on the other, spontaneous and at the same time planned. This art stimulates our imagination, makes us doubt exactly what we are seeing.
Kim Sangyoung is a contemporary south korean artist. Kim Sangyoung’s first verified exhibition was held at Cais Gallery in Hong Kong in 2007, and the most recent exhibition was in 2009. Kim Sangyoung is most frequently exhibited in South Korea, but also had exhibitions in Hong Kong.
Lee Ufan is a Korean-Japanese artist. He is a leading figure of the Mono-ha movement, which emerged in Japan in the late 1960s and emphasized the relationships between natural and industrial materials, space, and perception.
Lee Ufan moved to Japan in 1956 and studied philosophy at Nihon University in Tokyo. In the late 1960s, he began to create minimalist sculptures and installations that explored the interactions between natural and industrial materials such as stone, metal, and glass.
In addition to his work as a visual artist, Lee Ufan is also a noted writer and philosopher. He has written extensively on aesthetics, contemporary art, and Zen Buddhism.
Lee Ufan's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul. He has also been the subject of several major retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2011 and the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2014.
Kim Yusob is a South Korean artist who lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from the Department of Fine Art at Chosun University, Gwangju, in 1983 Kim Yusob moved to Berlin. There he studied both at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee in East Berlin and at the Western Universität der Künste (University of the Arts). 1995 he became Meisterschüler (Master Disciple) of Wolfgang Petrick. Since 1996 Kim has been teaching at Chosun University, where he completed Graduate School in 2001. From 2007 on he has been teaching at the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts). In 2014 he became Professor of Painting at Chosun University. Within his oeuvre Kim Yusob aims at providing new impulses for abstract expressionism. His process of painting unites religious, philosophical and Anthroposophical aspects. Due to Kim’s background it is also rooted in Daoism and the I Ching. Furthermore, Kim obtains a typical effect by applying special technique of decelerating the colours’ drying.