Kyu Sang Lee


Current:
DOUBLE FEATURE: Deichtorhallen Hamburg PHOXXI  
Academy Positions [Berlin Art Week], Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin   

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DOUBLE FEATURE: GUTE AUSSICHTEN 2023/24/25
6.9.2025–6.11.2025
Deichtorhallen Hamburg PHOXXI

Gleich zwei Jahrgänge präsentiert die diesjährige Ausstellung GUTE AUSSICHTEN – JUNGE DEUTSCHE FOTOGRAFIE im PHOXXI, dem temporären Haus der Photographie der Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Die 13 Preisträger*innen des renommierten Nachwuchspreises für Absolvent*innen des Studienbereichs Fotografie loten neue Horizonte des fotografischen Mediums aus. In ihren Arbeiten verhandeln die Künstler*innen Themen wie kulturelle Mehrheimischkeit, urbane Spannungsfelder, mentale Zustände sowie digitale und generative Bildwelten.

Dabei zeigen die künstlerischen Strategien und Techniken das Medium Fotografie in seiner dynamischsten Form: Bilder bewegen sich im Raum, lösen sich von ihrem Träger und entwickeln sich live vor den Augen der Betrachtenden. In der großzügigen Ausstellungsarchitektur des PHOXXI finden auch zuvor nicht gezeigte installative und raumgreifende Arbeiten ihren Platz.

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This year’s exhibition GUTE AUSSICHTEN – YOUNG GERMAN PHOTOGRAPHY at PHOXXI, the temporary House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, presents not one but two graduating years. The 13 prize-winners of the renowned award for graduates in the field of photography explore new horizons of the medium. In their works, the artists address themes such as cultural multiple belonging, urban tensions, states of mind, as well as digital and generative image worlds.

Their artistic strategies and techniques reveal photography in its most dynamic form: images move through space, detach themselves from their physical support, and evolve live before the eyes of the viewers. Within the generous exhibition architecture of PHOXXI, previously unseen installation-based and large-scale works also find their place.

POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair
6.9.2025–6.11.2025
Flughafen Tempelhof Hangar 7

From 11 - 14 September 2025, the twelfth edition of POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair will be held at Tempelhof Airport Hangar 7.

POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair presents 75 international galleries from 19 countries with their most important positions in contemporary and modern art. This year 's special focus is on galleries from Japan.

POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair continues to be a vital cornerstone of the German art scene at the start of the autumn season. The selected galleries have the opportunity to present their artistic programs and perspectives to a broad international audience during the Berlin Art Week. POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair 2025 takes place in the spacious hangar 7 of Berlin-Tempelhof Airport. The hangar, with their 16-meter-high ceilings and abundant natural light, along with the backdrop of the airfield, provide a unique and relaxed atmosphere spanning over 8,000 sqm. This ample space allows for a diverse and high-quality supporting program, including special exhibitions, award ceremonies, talks, the Berlin Art Week Collectors Dinner, and many other highlights. 

Since 2014 POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair remains the official partner and today is the only art fair of the Berlin Art Week, a prestigious event that brings together selected exhibition openings from Berlin's galleries, private collections, project spaces, and major museums and institutions, including the Neue Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlinische Galerie, Gropius Bau, and many more.
Gute Aussichten -
Junge Deutsche fotografie 2024/2025
4.4.2025–3.8.2025
Landesmuseum Koblenz

Bereits zum 21. Mal werden im Rahmen des Nachwuchsförderungsprojektes „gute aussichten – junge deutsche fotografie“ herausragende Abschlussarbeiten von Absolventinnen und Absolventen deutscher Hochschulen und Akademien im Bereich Fotografie ausgezeichnet. Das Projekt bietet jungen Fotografinnen und Fotografen eine Plattform, um ihre Arbeiten einem breiten Publikum vorzustellen. Nun hat Innenstaatssekretärin Simone Schneider im Kulturzentrum Festung Ehrenbreitstein die Ausstellung der diesjährigen Siegerarbeiten offiziell eröffnet.

Support:
 Körber Stiftung, GDKE, Landesmuseum Koblenz
and Gute Aussichten.
Still-life Invention No. 1

2025
Various pigments on wool felt.
29 x 21 cm

Still-life Invention No. 1 explores the tension between presence and erasure. An image of an uncarved stone, poised between becoming and disappearance, is printed onto natural wool felt, a material chosen for its softness, warmth, and quiet resistance. A single chroma key blue dot occupies the corner: a colour engineered not to be seen,
but to be removed. 

Here, it stands as both a mark of identity and a symbol of its erasure a body trying to belong by vanishing. The piece negotiates fractured subjectivity shaped by displacement and emotional inheritance. Its unresolved form does not seek completion, but insists on remaining in-between a subtle, persistent refusal to resolve into clarity.


Still-life Invention (Op. 2)

2024
Woodplate, Acrylic paint, archival photographs, 
bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (DGEBA), natural urushiol.
100 x 80 cm


Opus 1 (Die Fuge der Kunst)

2024
Woodplate, Acrylic paint, archival photographs, 
bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (DGEBA), natural urushiol.
60 x 75 cm

Opus 1 (The Fugue of Art) is a cartographic altarpiece of entangled personal and collective histories spanning Asia, Africa, and Europe, adopting a postcolonial or transcultural perspective. It positions the artist’s practice within a broader socio-political and cultural context, while referencing classical traditions and formal structures. The work merges intimate and universal themes, inviting a re-examination of identity, heritage, and the interwoven nature of histories.

1. Opus 1 (Die Fuge der Kunst)
2. Installation view.
3. unfinished manuscript of the "Fuga a 3 Soggetti", from "The Art of Fugue" BWV 1080 by Johann Sebastian Bach.
4. Irworobongdo
5. Vivarini: The Madonna of Humility, the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Pietà
6. Picasso: Guernica (detail)
7. Rodin: The Thinker (model), Gilt-bronze Maitreya in Meditation (National Museum of Korea)
8. Hardtack Umbrella underwater nuclear test 8 June 1958, loudspeakers against North Korea for propaganda broadcasts.
9. Malevich: Supremus No. 50 (1915)
Ostinato Interstice Rendering

Techne Sphere Galerie, Leipzig, DE.
as part of M-24 Festival 
Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Fine Art Leipzig)
23 - 29.09.2024

This exhibition navigates the intricate play of identity, temporality, and aesthetics, drawing deep from the transcontinental experiences of its maker. Themes of cultural intersectionality and personal displacement are worked out in Ostinato Interstice Rendering-the work is informed by the artist's own journey through South Korea, South Africa, and Germany.

These are works born from ambiguity, often merging surrealist narratives with symbolic imagery. Fragments of sculptures, organic forms, and chroma key green-a color synonymous with digital transformation-are used to negotiate belonging in a fluid and connected world. The green here slips from conspicuous into invisible, acting as a telling metaphor for the malleability of identity and dissolution of boundaries between technology and humanity.

It is a practice of history and self re-contextualizing by dissolving binary distinctions into the flux of human existence. This exhibition brings together world cultures, ancient and contemporary influences to establish new, universal narratives that surpass divides, joining peoples rather than conflicts in a world that never rests.

Projekt Gefördert durch Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.
Cinema

2024
AlMg3, DIP-LED, Audio equipments (Beolab 05)
Size Variable

Through cinema, it deconstructs the contemporaneous obsession with technology and science because this deconstructs the viewer's expectation of what it would be in his senses. A screen reduced to its most minimal function-a single pixel-is central to the work. The deliberate degradation turns the video into a rhythmic blinking LED against an immersive soundscape produced through high-fidelity speakers. This juxtaposition challenges one to reevaluate their over-dependence on high-resolution visuals and technological precision. This allows for audiences to engage in a reevaluation of values from reduced complexity to the human experience within technological systems. While an aesthetic reduction, Cinema urges new thought in our changing relationships with media and perception.
Opus 0

2024
Woodplate, Acrylic paint, archival photographs, 
bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (DGEBA), urushiol (korean lacquer).
25 x 30 cm