Lee Dong-youb

Born in 1946, Lee Dong Youb graduated from Hong-Ik University and the graduate school. He got married with Lee Hye-Ran, the founder of Seoul Gallery where he held the first solo exhibition, in 1977. He has had solo exhibitions more than ten times such as in Seoul and Tokyo. He has participated in many group exhibitions in Japan, Seoul, New York, and Paris including the first `Independent' exhibition which sponsored by Korean Fine Arts Association. He lives in Seoul with his family.

He gives effort to show extremely expressing formality about white color and air through work. His work is far, broad, deep, and difficult because he has pursued the echo of cosmic perception from his early days. Bokijae of ancient times determined anonymous sky and ground as source of recognition, and made basic symbol emblem as drawing a line in the sky of empty like Taegeuk of national flag of Korea. He has employed his artistic indication from attitude, which conveys the representative symbol of quickening perfection from vibration of Biui, which has conceived from the ancient times. Therefore, his early works of 10 years ago occurred extraordinary attention which has kept until now.

Lew, June Sang (art critic, former chief curator of National Museum of Contemporary Art of Korea): When I said that "The vertical axis is vibrating delicately," I said so because since the drawn contours of vertical shapes are standing in a minor grading of shade and shadow, a phenomenon can be perceived in which the vertical steel, when struck, shakes to the left and the right for a while producing some lingering sounds in the wake.

Yusuke NAKAHARA (art critic): His works are typified by the annihilation of objects. In the works in which he painted a glass or one with ice floating in it, the outline of the objects was quite clear, but the outlines have gradually begun to disappear, and in his recent works the delineation of objects has been reduced to the point where only a suggestion of their existence remains. Rather than calling it a form, it is perhaps more proper to speak about in on the level of a momentary phenomenon. Moreover, as we feel it moving away into the distance out of our world of sight, it returns to the matrix white.

Kim Mikyung (Prof. Kangnam Univ. Art History): Lee Dong-Yeop debuted at the First Independents Exhibition (1972) with paintings of semi-transparent cups against a white background. At the FIVE HINSEK show, he presented images of melting cups on neutral-colored canvases. What his paintings address wasn't the problem of white tone per se, but rather: 'if the cup is a container of the universe, ice is the existence in it; through depicting the processes of melting and evaporation of ice and the resulting emptiness, the painting suggests the fungible or inconstant nature of things. Nonetheless, the indistinct white-toned background was already there in all of his paintings, and the Japanese organizers paid attention to this aspect of his work.

• Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, Japan
• National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul/Guacheon
• Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), Seoul
• The Ho-Am Art Museum, Seoul
• The Museum of Hong-Ik University, Seoul
• Busan Metropolitan Museum of Art, Busan
• Sunggok Art Museum, Seoul
• POSCO Museum, Seoul
• Hakgojae, Seoul

• 1980 Grand Prize at the 7th Korean Fine Art Grand Prize Exhibition, Hankuk Ilbo, Seoul
• 1978 Special Selection at the 1st Grand Exhibition, Joongang Ilbo, Seoul
• 1978 Excellent Frontier Prize at the 5th Grand Exhibition of Korean Fine Arts, Hankuk Ilbo, Seoul
• 1974 Prize at the 6th Cagness International Painting Festival, Cagness, France
• 1972 Grand Prize at the 1st Independents, Korean Fine Arts Association, Seoul

• Ontology
• cycle
• Void
• White space
• Zen
• Taoism
• Minimalism
• Monochrome painting
• Abstract expressionism
• Monoha
• Lee U-Fan

• Official website, InterWhite
• ARKO(The Arts Council Korea)'s 500 Artists: Lee Dong Youb