Exhibition Information

(출처=갤러리현대)

(출처=갤러리현대)

			As an artist, Kang Seung Lee has challenged the mainstream historical narrative and its focus on a First World white male heterosexual narrative, creating artwork that visualizes minorities who are forgotten or excluded in that narrative. While producing his work, Lee has been a historian of sorts, tenaciously scouring public and private archives such as art and craft collections, art college libraries, and the collections of LGBTQ groups. In his exploration process, he rediscovers material about historical events (AIDS epidemic, the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising) and figures (including artists of the preceding generation such as Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, Martin Wong, Yato Tamotsu, Alvin Baltrop, Derek Jarman, Tseng Kwong Chi, Goh Choo San, and queer civil rights activists such as Joon-soo Oh), recontextualizing their achievements and their legacy to the world in cultural, artistic, and political terms.

Artwork and archival materials that relate to particular people and events are “translated” and appropriated into different media such as graphite drawings, Sambe and gold thread embroidery, ceramics, and neon. Working predominantly in drawing and embroidery creations that acquire tactile, labor-intensive, and ritualistic meaning through their creation by the artist’s hand over time, Lee proposes ways of rewriting histories that have been concealed or expunged. He also invites fellow artists of different ethnicities, sexual orientations, and backgrounds to collaborate on his work, contributing to the creation of different narratives as they take part actively in weaving an alternative discourse. In that sense, Lee’s creation process and its results hold special meaning as part of a curatorial practice reflecting ideal values of participation, education, and sharing. 

Briefly Gorgeous,* Kang Seung Lee’s first solo exhibition at Gallery Hyundai, focuses on queer communities in different generations, regions, and eras, which he interconnects as he attempts an intellectual dialogue across space and time. It includes over 40 new works in a diverse mixture of media that include graphite drawings and gold thread embroidery on Sambe—allusions to life and death, the frailty of beauty and the fleeting nature of memory—as well as paintings on transformed canvases, ceramics, garment, artist books, film footage, and Polaroid images. Most crucially, Lee attempts a queering of Gallery Hyundai, spanning everything from the large exterior banner to the inner nooks and crannies of an institution with a history dating back over a half-century. The gallery undergoes a flexible transformation into a space incorporating the memories, experiences, and narratives of queer communities—including a queer museum and library, an archive, an unknown garden where dry grass grows, and a club. This is an occasion for gathering here and now to dance together and imagine a new “Queer Future” . . . if only for a moment.

Featuring: Beatriz Cortez, Clifford Prince King, Dean Sameshima, fierce pussy, Haneyl Choi, Homie Garden, Lucas Michael, Patricia Fernandez, Shawn McQuate, Tseng Kwong Chi, Smallstudiosemi
Playlists by: Dew Kim, Jungle, Lee Jungsik, Minihan, Young-jun Tak, Jaeseok Kim, Haneyl Choi, Byul.org

* The exhibition title was taken from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, an autobiographical novel by Ocean Vuong, who is considered one of the US’s most noted young poets and queer writers.

** No reservation is required for the exhibition.


(Source=Gallery Hyundai)