Hyungkoo Lee
MEASURE
2 September–19 October 2014
Gallery Skape
58-4 Samcheongro
Jongnogu, Seoul
Korea
Gallery Skape is pleased to announce the opening of MEASURE, featuring 2007′s Venice Biennale’s Korean Pavilion artist Hyungkoo Lee, from 2 September to 19 October. This new series of works has a wide-ranging practice of installation, sculpture and drawings.
Lee has shown body transformation, distortion and augmentation through his boundless imagination and scientific execution. His new work, MEASURE, is rooted from a rigorous and objective knowledge by observing the human body and horse reminiscent of his previous disposition based on archaeological, biological and humanistic approaches; yet this time, Lee further engages and extends his optical sensory approach from kinaesthetic experiences to the standpoint of visual perception.
The new exhibition’s title provides a hint of the artist’s perception. Measure, from the Latin word Metron, derives its meaning from quantification in mathematical terms, but it is also defined as a rhythm and constructed regularity. Lee overthrows what has been limited by visual perception by using a wearable device to enable him to conduct his explorations in kinaesthetic experience through his own body and world. Moreover, he who intensely immersed with dressage steps, also creates his own beat and flow, resisting against the biological and physical limitation. This exhibition will provide a platform to link this segmented world’s time and space through the rhythm that has been measured by the artist’s own body.
Born in 1969, Hyungkoo Lee lives and works in Seoul. Solo exhibitions include ANIMATUS, Natural History Museum, Basel; Animatuseum, ARARIO Gallery, New York (2008); The Homo species, Korean Pavillion, Giardini, Venice Biennale (2007). Lee also has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Spectrum-Spectrum, PLATEAU, Seoul (2014); Beastly Hall, A Place Where Artists and Creatures Collide, Hall Place & Gardens, Bexley Kent (2013); One must imagine Sisyphus happy, Neo Bankside, London; Superhuman, Wellcome Collection, London (2012); Bad Exhibition, Pin Gallery, Beijing (2011); Plastic Garden, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); Extreme Frontiers, Urban Frontiers, Institute Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia; VRAOUM!, La Maison Rouge, Paris; Mythologies, Haunch of Venison, London (2009); GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy of Arts, London; METAMORPHOSES Korean Trajectories, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris (2008); Contemporary Korean Art: Wonderland, National Art of Museum China, Beijing (2007); ALLLOOKSAME? Art from China, Japan and Korea, Fondazione Sandretto re Rabaudengo, Turin; Art Spectrum, Leeum, Seoul (2006); Young Artist from Korea, China and Japan, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon; and The Joan Mitchell Foundation 2002 & 2003 MFA Grant Recipients, Cue Art Foundation Gallery, New York (2004).
*Image: Hyungkoo Lee, Instrument 01, 2014. Aluminium tubes, aluminium, wood, leather, buckles, rivets, thread, wire, toe clips, bolts, nuts, screws, bearings, washers, cooper nails, steel horseshoes(1), horse nails, horse tail hair, 157 x 90 x 52 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Skape.
