Expositions passées
Lee Ungno’s relationship with Shinsegae Group dates back to the 1970s. At the Favorite Modern Paintings from the Collection of Kwon Young-do exhibition, held at the Shinsegae Gallery from July 30 through August 11, 1974, Lee’s paintings were featured alongside the creations of Jang Seung-eop, Heo Ryeon, Heo Baek Ryeon, and Kim Eun-ho. Two years later, in May 1976, the same gallery held a private exhibition titled Goam Lee Ungno that predominantly displayed Lee’s most recent works. This 1976 exhibition was particularly significant because it showed just how closely worked Lee and Shinsegae were. Another exhibition that showcased this connection was the Goam Lee Ungno exhibition, held at Gwangju Shinsegae Gallery in March 2018.
Lee Ungno, Into the New World, co-hosted by the Lee Ungno Museum and Daejeon Shinsegae Gallery, is a special exhibition that commemorates: the decennial of the Daejeon Goam Art & Culture Foundation; and the 2022 General Meeting of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). The exhibition provides viewers with the opportunity to appreciate Lee’s art in a new way, as it is shown using the latest technologies.
The exhibition is comprised of two sections, the first of which is outside the Shinsegae Gallery. This portion of the exhibition features digitized versions of Lee’s artworks, projected onto a nine-meter-tall media wall that is part of the three-story Daejeon Shinsegae Art & Science Central Void and 12, two-meter-tall media walls that are on the sixth floor of the building.
Modern exhibition venues, such as art galleries, originated in the Renaissance era (in the14th century) and after centuries of development, universally adopted a white-walled format, a phenomenon which is explained in detail in “Inside the White Cube,” a seminal 1976 essay by art critic Brian O’Doherty. Artists from a wide range of genres have attempted to transcend the physical/spatial limitations of the “white cube” of the art gallery. One such effort to transcend the white cube—and expose Lee’s art to a wider audience—is the use of the exterior of the Daejeon Shinsegae Gallery as an exhibition space. Peter C. Marzio, the late former director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, believed that museums should be “a place for all people” and serve as centers for the local community that are as easily accessible as shopping malls. What Marzio rightly pointed out was the importance of expanding exhibition spaces so that they can accommodate a much larger transient pool of visitors. The art museums of the 21st century are not only places for displaying artworks; they also extend the reach of art so that it can communicate closely with visitors. In other words, by using the exterior of the building, everyone who visits the Daejeon Shinsegae Art & Science is a visitor to the exhibition. This means that an unspecified number of people, whether they planned it or not, experience Lee’s art as it becomes incorporated into the fabric of their daily routines.
The second exhibition space is inside Daejeon Shinsegae Gallery. The gallery not only features archives on Lee and his original artworks but also a new, digital media interpretation of his artistic world.
In 1958, two years after being invited to France by the French art critic Jacques Lassaigne, Lee Ungno moved to France at the age of 54. After settling in Paris, Lee thoroughly acquainted himself with Art Informel, the painting style that was prevalent in the French art community at the time. He then merged Art Informel with traditional Korean brush and ink and founded a new type of abstract art with a distinctly Eastern aesthetic. In his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, media theorist Marshall McLuhan argues that all media formats are an extension of the senses and that it is the senses that make up an individual’s belief systems and experiences. The digital interpretations of Lee’s art included in this exhibition present the artist’s lifelong experiments with art in a vivid, multi-sensory format, providing visitors with a unique experience that deeply resonates with each individual at a personal level. Visitors will feel, through media-based recreations, as if the subjects of Lee’s artworks are leaping out of the canvas, which will make the exhibition a highly immersive experience.
Through Lee Ungno, Into the New World, the Lee Ungno Museum and Daejeon Shinsegae Gallery invite visitors to reengage with the fascinating world of Lee Ungno’s art and to find the door to a new world in which the everyday is closely intertwined with culture and the arts.
