Lee Sung-kuen’s atypical abstract sculpture in the shape of eggs or cocoons is best defined by the keywords of human, love and light. The artist brings the presence of his works into line with surrounding environments, creating an unfamiliar but novel form of life and space. In this process, a shared communion between the audience and the artwork takes hold.

In particular, the works on display at LOTTE HOTEL WORLD produce dazzling visual changes with various colors and light effects. Based on the viewer’s curiosity and aesthetic rhythm, this form of life suspended in the space gives rise to interaction according to the harmonious placement of form, color and light. Each movement brings about a communion that creates a particular form of life and a new world, as well as an organic relationship between the work’s external changes and within the viewer, that cannot be separated or distinguished. Lee’s installations are human, love and light sculptures that take the form of instinctive purity and create new life.

Lee Sung-kuen previously served as a professor at the Hongik University College of Fine Arts and has been a resident artist for Tornabuoni Art in Milan, Paris and London. He came into prominence overseas with exhibitions held at the Triennale Museum in Milan, Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris and Dennos Museum Center in Michigan.

Using cables that can transmit endless communications, he ties numerous piano wires with high tensile strength using the eco-friendly cold welding method. His intention was to express the many forms of love shown by people of different races, backgrounds and cultures when meeting, greeting and embracing each other, all of which he had observed while working overseas for an extended period in Europe, China and the United States. The dots that take on different forms of shadows depending on the space, light and natural environment, resemble the impact of human relationships and communication. Lee’s works attempt to capture human relationships and the exchange between various environments, societies, cultures, and technologies.

His sculptures are on display in Korea at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, as well as overseas at the Triennale Museum in Milan, Centro d’Arte La Loggia in Tuscany, and Villa Romana in Florence.