GALLERY HYUNDAI is delighted to present Zero Gravity, a solo exhibition of Dongi Lee (b.1967) who has continuously experimented with the fragmented images of the mass media society, since the 1990s.
The exhibition title, “Zero Gravity,” is the subject matter that Lee had been contemplating from his early working stage to this day and it unveils his unique perception on the ‘image of today’. He is widely known as one of the ‘pioneers of Korean Pop Art’ or the ‘Father of Atomaus’; however, ‘Atomaus’ and ‘Pop Art’ cannot fully define the oeuvres of Dongi Lee. To Lee, the ‘image of today’ is something that freely flits, blends, disappears and protrudes, not constrained by the single immense power of gravity. In other words, the contemporaneous conditions of the buoyant images that lost their singular referent, and the random selection or combination of the images placed within the incomplete and indefinite network of meaning are the core essence of Lee’s art world. Ultimately, this exhibition intends to show the ‘anomie state of the images of today,’ which Lee has relentlessly explored before and after Atomaus.
Hence, Dongi Lee suggests that image is not defined by single means, for it is something complex and enigmatic. Also, paradoxically, Lee anticipates the audience to contemplate on impartial equilibrium through his works.