2020 Changwon
Sculpture
Biennale

Untitled

LEE showcases a fake rock that looks exactly like a real one in this “Untitled” series. He sculpted those rock structures out of polystyrene, then covered them with traditional Korean paper soaked with black ink and sawdust like a skin of the rock. LEE has created a scene that looks like a couple of big rocks lying on the floor; however, this is a complete illusion. LEE materialized the ideal of the mimesis called “trompe-l’œil”, a technique developed during the Renaissance to represent objects as realistically as possible, onto the body of sculpture through the perfect reproduction called hyperrealism. For this reason, this work becomes even more special when the visitor finally realizes that this rock is fake, not real. At this very moment, the keyword Non-sculpture comes into one’s mind.