Image: Lot 180 Gallery ; lotte museum of art seoul 3
The LOTTE Museum of Art in Seoul is presenting a major solo exhibition of Lee Kang So, a representative figure in Korean contemporary art. Titled ‘Emergence and Dissolution,’ the exhibition runs from 21 August to 1 November 2026 and brings together paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and performance in a single museum presentation.
Timed to coincide with Frieze Seoul 2026, the exhibition surveys decades of Lee’s artistic experimentation and philosophical reflection. Rather than separating the artist’s work by medium, the presentation places the different forms of his practice in what the museum describes as one continuous flow. The arrangement connects works made through distinct processes while emphasizing the movement between them.
Lee’s practice is presented through an approach that prioritizes process over outcome. In the exhibition’s framing, an artwork is not a fixed conclusion but a space in which time, action, relationships and perception accumulate. Brushstrokes and other traces function as records of an unfolding process, linking the physical act of making with the changing conditions through which a work is experienced.
The range of media on view reflects Lee’s fluid movement across artistic forms. Alongside painting, the exhibition includes sculpture, photography and video, as well as performance. This breadth allows the museum to position Lee’s work not as a sequence of separate experiments, but as an interconnected body of research shaped by recurring attention to action, perception and the passage of time.
The exhibition also looks back toward the moments that shaped Korean contemporary art, using Lee’s work as its central point of reference. The museum’s description identifies him as a significant figure in that history, while the presentation’s combination of works across several decades foregrounds the continuing relationship between experimentation and reflection in his practice.
Lee Kang So is scheduled to give an artist talk at the LOTTE Museum of Art on Friday, 4 September 2026, at 11 a.m. The exhibition ‘Emergence and Dissolution’ remains on view at the Seoul museum through 1 November 2026.
