Lee Kangwon’s works on display at the show are largely divided into two kinds: One, made of rubber sponge, is widely scattered all over the first exhibition hall and the other is fabricated from craypas in indigo, crimson, and sky blue. What is above all most eye-catching is his use of unconventional materials which are considered rather uncommon in sculpture. Particularly, Lee’s sculptural work, evoking a strong sense of overriding the space where it is placed, renders subtle, impressive color effects through the attributes of those materials. In <sunrise and sunset> each sculpture looks somewhat ordinary due to its unclear shape but, upon closer examination, we can know that every sculpture apparently has its own shadow. This is the focal point of Lee’s art. Why he has so far focused on the shadow and what it means?
In comparison to other genres, a sculpture has an obvious link with its space, as sculpture is characteristically three-dimensional. If a sculpture is placed in a specific space, the work quite naturally has its own shadow. The silhouette may be, of course, rendered by either natural or artificial light, and its brightness is dependent on the amount of light. As long as all lights are not thoroughly excluded, an object in sculpture brings about its shadow indispensably. Although the shadow is often conceptually or ideally regarded ancillary, it’s hard to deny that it is a crucial part of a sculptural work, when put in a certain actual place.
Lee Kangwon in his work exploits rubber sponge to express the shadow. As if dealing with the wood with a traditional technique, he carves and sandpapers the rubber sponge. In the process of completing a form, he brings together sponge leftovers and dusts. Lee confers a new status on the sponge dusts, although they are undoubtedly the trivial to be thrown away. As the shadow is massless, it is not possible to feel its substance, but Lee materializes it, thereby enabling us to touch it directly. His artificial shadow also implies that Lee is considering the existence of light in his sculptural surroundings.
On display at the second exhibition hall are colorful works that also employ a unique material, craypas. Craypas is commonly used in painting and thus, when adopted in sculpture, that may loom quite clumsy and unfamiliar to us. Like watercolors, pigments, and paints, craypas is used to represent some colors, or color itself. Because it is customarily believed to reveal three dimensionality and massiveness is the heart of sculpture, the use of colors is considered inessential and all the more the ruin of an aesthetic effect.
As well as in his manifestation of shadows, Lee makes efficient use of craypas to bring lights to color effects in sculpture. He creates a form after melting and molding craypas in the same context of craving the rubber sponge. As presumed in the titles such as <forest>, <skyline>, and others, those works capture the silhouettes of nature and cityscapes in which we are living.
It can be said that Lee complements the function and role of sculpture through the adoption of completely new materials in sculpture such as rubber sponge and craypas. Lee’s sculptural works, if poised all together under the same roof, bring about a visually distinctive atmosphere. Each piece is in the moment organically incorporated and linked to each other, attracting our attention to its colors. Losing its physical massiveness and thickness, his work becomes unmaterialized and two-dimensional. By putting more emphasis on considerably heterogeneous elements in sculpture such as color, light, and shadow, Lee metamorphoses three dimensionality into a two-dimensional quality, greatly expanding the boundaries of sculpture.
Lee Kangwon reinstates the factors of shadow and color that have remained inessential in sculpture. Opening the possibility of inter-penetration between sculpture and painting by doing his work in two-dimensional images, Lee extends the domain of sculpture in a pliable, gentle manner.

By Ryu Hanseung / Ph.D. in Art Studies & Curator of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea