KANG SEUNG LEE
Born 1978, Seoul, South Korea.
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Stills from Skin (2021). Courtesy the Artist and Commonwealth and Council.
Kang Seung Lee’s practice, which extends to a number of different media, including drawing, video, and installation, is deeply rooted in the chronicling of queer histories. With Skin (2021), Lee has scanned the scarred and tattooed bodies of fellow activists and artists in his Los Angeles-based queer community — Julie Tolentino, Jen Smith, Jennifer Moon, and Young Joon Kwak — and joined the records of their bodies into one continuous, soundless, three-channel video.
Recognizing the epidermis’s indirect capacity to act as a document of our own bodies — bearing either chosen symbols or evidence of past trauma — the work suspends a fleeting moment in these peoples’ lives, nodding to what has already occurred and the marks yet to be made.
Skin serves as an extension of Lee’s exploration of remembrance — whose narratives are preserved and how — and its presentation in the form of an irregular scroll that is neither stable nor easily decipherable, speaks to how malleable history actually is, how it’s formed and shaped from an accumulation of impermanent moments, and the inevitable loss that accompanies the act of preservation.
Recognizing the epidermis’s indirect capacity to act as a document of our own bodies — bearing either chosen symbols or evidence of past trauma — the work suspends a fleeting moment in these peoples’ lives, nodding to what has already occurred and the marks yet to be made.
Skin serves as an extension of Lee’s exploration of remembrance — whose narratives are preserved and how — and its presentation in the form of an irregular scroll that is neither stable nor easily decipherable, speaks to how malleable history actually is, how it’s formed and shaped from an accumulation of impermanent moments, and the inevitable loss that accompanies the act of preservation.
In Skin (Young Joon Kwak) 2021, a large-scale drawing of still images from the scans of Young Joon Kwak, a multi-disciplinary artist and founder of Mutant Salon, an itinerant platform for experimental performance collaborations. Lee meticulously depicts the figure of his fellow queer artist, producing an exacting record of their form, while also recognizing the body as a performative object.
Contrastingly, Untitled (Tseng Kwong Chi) (2019–2020), a series of painstakingly rendered drawings Lee made of the Hong Kong-based artist’s renowned 1979 photographs, showing Tseng dressed in a Zhongshan, or “Mao” suit, in front of famous tourist sites across the United States, Lee recreates the images but omits the photographer’s form. In both cases, the body moves to the forefront of Lee’s focus, reckoning with what has been lost as well as the importance of capturing and recording present figures in real time.
Lee’s previous projects of documentation, some of which can be seen at the ongoing New Museum Triennial, extend to other marginalized communities. In Untitled (QueerArch) (2018–21), an immersive installation at the 2021 Gwangju Biennial, Lee presented records from the personal archives of Chae-yoon Hahn, a South Korean activist and editor of one of the country’s first queer magazines. By unearthing and repositioning cross-cultural legacies, Lee shifts attention towards underserved artists on the margins of the Western-focused art historical canon.
Contrastingly, Untitled (Tseng Kwong Chi) (2019–2020), a series of painstakingly rendered drawings Lee made of the Hong Kong-based artist’s renowned 1979 photographs, showing Tseng dressed in a Zhongshan, or “Mao” suit, in front of famous tourist sites across the United States, Lee recreates the images but omits the photographer’s form. In both cases, the body moves to the forefront of Lee’s focus, reckoning with what has been lost as well as the importance of capturing and recording present figures in real time.
Lee’s previous projects of documentation, some of which can be seen at the ongoing New Museum Triennial, extend to other marginalized communities. In Untitled (QueerArch) (2018–21), an immersive installation at the 2021 Gwangju Biennial, Lee presented records from the personal archives of Chae-yoon Hahn, a South Korean activist and editor of one of the country’s first queer magazines. By unearthing and repositioning cross-cultural legacies, Lee shifts attention towards underserved artists on the margins of the Western-focused art historical canon.
Kang Seung Lee, Skin (Young Joon Kwak), 2021, graphite on paper, 97 1/2 x 45 inches (247.7 x 114.3 cm). Courtesy the Artist and Commonwealth and Council.
Kang Seung Lee received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (2015). Lee has had solo exhibitions and projects at 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica (2020); Hapjungjigu, Seoul (2019); One and J. Gallery, Seoul (2018); Artpace, San Antonio (2017); Baik Art, Los Angeles (2017); Commonwealth and Council (2017, 2016); Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (2016); Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont (2015); and Centro Cultural Border, Mexico City (2012). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Gwangju Biennial 2021; Asia Cultural Center, Gwangju (2020); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2020); Daelim Museum, Seoul (2020); Palm Springs Art Museum (2019); PARTICIPANT INC., New York (2019); Canton Gallery, Guangzhou (2018); LA><ART (2017); and Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador (2016). Lee is a recipient of the 18th Street Arts Center Artist Lab Residency (2020), California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2019), the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant (2018), and Artpace San Antonio International Artist-in-Residence program (2017). Lee’s work is currently on view in Close to You at MASS MoCA through January 2022. A solo exhibition of his work will open at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, in 2021, and is featured in the 2021 New Museum Triennial. Lee's work is in the collection of Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea.