PARIS.- As part of the France-Korea Year, Tornabuoni Art Paris dedicates an exhibition to this very special artist, from July 1st to September 10th, 2016. In the same way Tornabuoni Art promotes internationally known Italian artists of the 20th century, the gallery aims to show the work of international and talented contemporary artists.

Tornabuoni Art works on a 4 exhibition per year program: two dedicated to Italian masters, a thematic show and a solo show where the gallery gives carte blanche to a contemporary artist.

Thus, the Korean artist Lee Sung-Kuen, discovered by Tornabuoni Art during his stay in Tuscany, already saw his works exhibited in 2010 at Tornabuoni Art Milan. Lee Sung-Kuen was born in Seoul in 1954, he has been teaching at the Department of Metal Art & Design of Hong-ik University (Seoul), since 1990. He is also Director of the Cultural Foundation of the National Museum of Korea in Seoul.

His works are held in the permanent collection of several great museums such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Korean Cultural Center in Beijing, the Villa Romana in Florence, the McGuire Fine Art Center in Rhode Island, and the NIKKO and NHK in Tokyo. Also exhibited at the Posco Art Museum of Seoul or at the Milan Triennale, Lee Sung-Kuen’s artworks penetrate space, harmonizing and animating their surroundings.

Lee Sung-Kuen’s artworks take shape in a web of colourful steel wires extremely thin, almost invisible, creating geometric structures, circular or elliptical, delicate and ethereal. These organic structures and true visual performances also caused sensation at the exhibition “Korea Now! Craft, design, fashion and graphic design in Korean” at the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris, 2015.

“Choosing void and scantiness to allude to massive volumes and quantity; choosing nothingness as the devoted champion of everything: this is what Lee Sung-Kuen does. And he does so without neglecting the minute horizon of the Eastern graphic tradition, because his approach to art echoes the ancient delicacy of the inks on paper, the preciousness of the Chinese alphabet, the candour of Japanese ceramics; it is the pursuit of sagacious manual skill, the lowliness of materials that are ordinary, even poor, certainly anything but precious or technological” explains Fabio Migliorati, art critic.