Jo Kwang-Suk, Fabio Migliorati
“Choosing void and scantiness to allude to massive volumes and quantity; choosing nothingness as the devoted champion of everything: this is what Lee Sung-Kuen does. And he does so without neglecting the minute horizon of the Eastern graphic tradition, because his approach to art echoes the ancient delicacy of the inks on paper, the preciousness of the Chinese alphabet, the candour of Japanese ceramics; it is the pursuit of sagacious manual skill, the lowliness of materials that are ordinary, even poor, certainly anything but precious or technological. “
Fabio Migliorati thus outlines the figure of Korean artist Lee Sung-Kuen in his critical treatise introducing this retrospective of the work of the contemporary master. Also vaunting a contribution by Korean art critic Jo Kwang-Suk, the book features images of fifty works chosen from the sculptor’s artistic production from 1999 to 2009; a rigorous sculptural production consisting of geometric structures that evoke substances in transformation: cells, organic elements, allusions to microscopic and macroscopic matter. The title of the volume, which is also the catalogue of the homonymous individual exhibition held by Tornabuoni Arte in its Milanese venue, refers to an individual module of Lee, who since 1997 usually defines his works with a single combination of few words, or few concepts, always identical, as “human + love + nature + light”.