Lot 1343: LEE HO RYON

LEE HO RYON
(B. 1978)
Overlapping Image
signed 'Lee, Ho-Ryon Lee Ho Ryon' in English; titled and inscribed 'OVERLAPPING IMAGE oil on canvas' in English'; inscribed and dated '162.0 x 130.3 2006' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
130.3 x 162.1 cm. (51 1/4 x 63 7/8 in.)
Painted in 2006

Comprehending the expected inclination of hyperrealism as one deems on the surface to represent everything, Kim Sung Jin and Lee Ho Ryon knowingly manipulate this propensity and tune the visual and sensual nerves towards a heightened sensorial intimacy with viewer and their paintings.

With their brilliant synthesis of analytical intellect with instinctive cropping, the artists spin realistic depiction of hyperrealism into signs and symbols, turning their visual motifs into objects of desires for consumption. Both Lee and Kim exhibit their acute eye for male anxiety in pictorial tease for allegorical eroticism; Kim's tactile infatuation clearly is manifested in his intense description and exploration of the three-dimensional lips by poking them with thorny objects Fateful (Lot 1295) or moistening them with the tongue Play Ontics (Lot 1294), whilst Lee arouses a perceptive tension in Overlapping Image (Lot 1343), progresses through a delicate sequence of poses in lifting up the female protagonist's skirt. Breaking taboos with sexual insinuations but retaining eastern demeanor of subtle seduction, both artists incorporate their works into an aesthetic tactic by stripping the figurative representation in to minimal essentials and transform them into semiotic concepts and successfully demonstrate their acute awareness in the power of gesture. By simple means of a magnified snapshot focus, the paintings are deconstructed into symbols of capitalist desires, moreover into voyeuristic objects.