Lee Chunkook
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Chunkook Lee (b. 1995) is a Seoul-based sculptor working between digital image culture and materially driven sculptural form. His practice spans aluminum, resin, glass, polymer clay, and 3D-printed elements, combining processes of virtual modeling with hands-on fabrication and attention to material change. Over recent years, he has developed a method of translating imagery from gaming, simulation, and online visual culture into sculptural objects.
Lee’s artistic inquiry centers on the relationship between image and object, examining how form persists and transforms within an environment saturated by visual information. Drawing on mythological, fantastical, and religious iconographies, his work merges organic motifs with human anatomical structures, articulating a symbolic vocabulary that reflects on the shared vitality of natural and corporeal forms. Within this framework, ornament is as an expanded sculptural condition: an excessive, generative surface through which questions of meaning, material origin, and perceptual experience are negotiated in a post-digital context.
Oscillating between virtual fantasy and tactile precision, Lee constructs hybrid forms in which organic growth and technological construction converge. His sculptures embody cultivated artificial vitality, where surfaces swell with intensity and detail, and where repetition and excess operate not as decoration but as structural and conceptual devices. Through this process, he develops a visual language that navigates the tension between simulation and material presence, situating sculpture within a broader dialogue on contemporary image culture.
Chunkook Lee has presented work in galleries, fairs, and institutional programs across South Korea, Europe, and Asia. Recent solo exhibitions include FARM (Bio Gallery, Seoul, 2025) and HIT AND RUN (Artspace Hyeong, Seoul, 2022), alongside group exhibitions at Yoho Seoul (2023), Chamber (Seoul, 2023), Mirrored Sphere (Seoul, 2023), LUPO (Milan, 2023), L.A.D (Seoul, 2023), SWAB Contemporary Art Fair (Barcelona, 2024), Frieze Seoul (2025), Art Central Hong Kong (2026, with Rarares Gallery and Artcnomads), and the London Art Fair (2026). He is represented by Rarares Gallery (Dubai), and lives and works in Seoul.
Lee’s artistic inquiry centers on the relationship between image and object, examining how form persists and transforms within an environment saturated by visual information. Drawing on mythological, fantastical, and religious iconographies, his work merges organic motifs with human anatomical structures, articulating a symbolic vocabulary that reflects on the shared vitality of natural and corporeal forms. Within this framework, ornament is as an expanded sculptural condition: an excessive, generative surface through which questions of meaning, material origin, and perceptual experience are negotiated in a post-digital context.
Oscillating between virtual fantasy and tactile precision, Lee constructs hybrid forms in which organic growth and technological construction converge. His sculptures embody cultivated artificial vitality, where surfaces swell with intensity and detail, and where repetition and excess operate not as decoration but as structural and conceptual devices. Through this process, he develops a visual language that navigates the tension between simulation and material presence, situating sculpture within a broader dialogue on contemporary image culture.
Chunkook Lee has presented work in galleries, fairs, and institutional programs across South Korea, Europe, and Asia. Recent solo exhibitions include FARM (Bio Gallery, Seoul, 2025) and HIT AND RUN (Artspace Hyeong, Seoul, 2022), alongside group exhibitions at Yoho Seoul (2023), Chamber (Seoul, 2023), Mirrored Sphere (Seoul, 2023), LUPO (Milan, 2023), L.A.D (Seoul, 2023), SWAB Contemporary Art Fair (Barcelona, 2024), Frieze Seoul (2025), Art Central Hong Kong (2026, with Rarares Gallery and Artcnomads), and the London Art Fair (2026). He is represented by Rarares Gallery (Dubai), and lives and works in Seoul.