Yunsung Lee is a visual artist acclaimed for his works that reinterpret Western master paintings into Japanese animation form. Lee’s works are amongst several others in the contemporary Korean art scene that explore this mainstream culture, allowing us to take note of its future direction.
Read MoreDuring his process, Lee combines Japanese animation clichés with traditional techniques of Western painting in the search for a new artistic form and language. In several of his works, the artist applies segmented framing methods found in comic books onto his canvas. As homogenous colors are layered onto the surface, they begin to remove a sense of perspective, thereby transforming what should be perceived as a three-dimensional world into an entirely flat one. In particular, Lee focusses on the female nude, painting hypersexualized and disproportionate forms. The figures often wear an expression of pain or surprise, which becomes particularly striking when one notices that most are missing arms or legs. These exaggerated features pay homage to the unrealistic expectations of women that can be found not only in Western classical painting, but in images of the 21st century.
Yunsung Lee was in born in 1985 in Korea and received his BFA in Painting from Chungang University in 2011. He has held solo exhibitions in DOOSAN Gallery in both New York and Seoul, as well as in Makeshop Art Space located in Paju, Korea. His works have been included in group exhibitions around Korea, with notable galleries being the Lee Eugean Gallery, Gallery Jinsun, Space K and the Ligak Art Museum.
