Myth, religion, psychology, and the fragmented nature of 21st century culture and media converge in Arthur Kwon Lee’s paintings, which are rendered in acrylic on canvas.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My paintings animate archetypal imagery from our collective unconscious through the lens of historical symbolism and mythologies.
The work is a combination of philosophical research, martial arts and personal religious experiences. By rendering significant cultural figures under a maelstrom of intense color harmonies both a subjective and objective conversation is created. This, with the diversity of mark-making and pixelated rendering technique, is where my language is made. In terms of materiality, I paint on large canvasses with acrylic.
When entering my studio, one sees a scattering of texts by Barthes, Campbell or Jung at one turn, only to an array of paint splattered across the walls at another. With that in regard my paintings can be described as a marriage between psychoanalytical imagery and fauvism.
Arthur Kwon Lee is a Korean American painter whose gestural mark making harmonizes expressive color palettes with world mythologies. His work has won awards from George Washington University, the Korean Artists Association, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and most recently the inaugural title of ‘Artist of the Year’ by the Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation. Lee draws inspiration from a broad range of sources including Jungian psychoanalysis, local religious traditions, and his lifelong commitment to martial arts. www.arthurkwonlee.com
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Came to know about you through your interview on “Occupied”. Thank you for thoughtful insights, from a former anti-nazi German, liberated from our eternal guilt. “Their” number is up.
Enjoyed your input for “occupied”. Just watched an outtake and was so happy to hear you say “they don’t care, never worry about death and destruction they have wrought upon humanity. Over 200 years of financed wars, assassinations , mass genocide, killing womem and children etc, etc. These things mean absolutely nothing to them.
You are the first guy I have listened to that puts it that succinctly!
I honour you for your truth.
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