Korean Ink Painter Lee Sang-pyo: "Ink Painting Is the Art of Waiting, Not Staging"
Creatrip Team
4 months ago
Korean painter Lee Sang-pyo opens a solo show, "Chance Met on the Road, Steps Make the Destiny," at the MIAF booth on the 3rd floor of La Mer, Insadong, from the 19th to 25th. The exhibition presents nine recent sumuk-damchae (ink-and-color on paper) works that reinterpret fleeting everyday scenes—people, light and shadow—through the artist's inner gaze, treating chance encounters as moments that shape life. Notable works include "People Opening Dawn," depicting photographers waiting at Uiamho (Uiam Lake) for frost-covered trees (sanggodae), and "Where Autumn Stayed," painted from persimmon trees at his Yeongheung farm. A latecomer to art after a business career, Lee debuted in 2020 with awards and has since built a steady record of exhibitions and honors, including consecutive selections at MIAF and special prizes at national shows. Critics praise his expansion of traditional sumuk (ink painting) into contemporary sensibilities, describing his use of ink wash as recording life’s rhythms—light, time and human emotion—where the flowing ink suggests patience and the passage of moments rather than staged scenes.
