Bum Hun Lee exhibition in Seoul
Autumn is wonderful in this part of the world, East Asia, where after heavy rains, scorching heat waves and devastating typhoons, flowers bloom in a variety of colors, sizes and shapes. . The relatively cool weather invites people to spend more time outdoors, attending numerous public events, festivals, social gatherings, art fairs and exhibitions.
Well-known Korean painter, Bum Hun Lee, brought the vivid colors of flowers to Dimension Gallery in Seoul in an exuberant exhibition that ran from August 30 to September 08, 2022.
At the opening event of the exhibition, Art Forms in Nature: Dance of the Flowers, I felt what could be exactly art therapy in such a way that looking at the paintings, you notice its effects of calming the mind and feeling the warmth of nature in your psyche. Besides the visual showcase, the artist shared his years of philosophical reflections on humanity and art in his published catalog.
In one of the artist’s reflections, he said: “I believe that the origin of art is found in the harmonized lives of people who live as members of society, to be harmonized is pursue the true value of life, which is to understand the meaning of “community”, understanding and respecting each other without lying or slandering. Even though we cannot understand all the fundamentals of the universe and the arrangement of nature, it is a process of pursuing the fundamentals as far as human abilities can be achieved.
Art critic, Benji Su Alexander, Ph.D., has observed the paintings contemplatively and writes that the exhibition Bum Hun Lee: Flower Dance “serves both a poetic and a philosophical purpose. The reviewer added that the paintings’ bright and radiant azaleas, saucer-shaped flowers, royal pinkish-bronze and crimson azaleas – native to Korea, Manchuria and Japan – are not just decorative adornment but a metaphorical way to framing our “being in the world”. … Rather, these petals are meant to index and frame our own ‘being in the world’, with their bustling collective dance captured in still images by his paintings, demonstrative of the figurative networks of connection and interaction of human beings. In doing so, Bum Hun Lee subtly makes us aware of how we exist alongside each other as social animals.
Seoul-based Dimension Gallery had the honor of hosting the exhibition and facilitated a brief conversation with the artist for Pressenza Press, alongside the Various Artists Association of Korea, DAKA, and representatives of foreign artists, where his particular interest in the reunification of the Korean peninsula and Peace in Myanmar was discussed. His artwork titled “Peace Myanmar” has fetched a thousand dollars, using the NFT online marketplace, with social efforts raising funds for peace, freedom and democracy movements in Myanmar. For such social endeavours, the artist mentioned his deep inspirational thoughts that where an individual artist and society meet, “a work of art is born out of an artist’s life, sometimes, however, the work of an individual artist influences the developments of society and humanity. On the contrary, the development of society and the world we live in inspires the life of an individual. The two axes of two lives interact, support the world and become history.Modern art is one of the links that connect the two.
Artist Bum Hun Lee. throughout his long career as an artist, planner, director and public figure, he served in many public matters as well as an art diplomat. He served as chairman of a Korea-China-Japan-North Korea exhibition operating committee for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, and had 38 solo showcases and 1000 domestic and foreign special exhibitions. . He is currently the President of the Federation of Arts and Culture Organizations of Korea, Honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Korean Fine Arts Association, Co-Chairman of the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, and Collaborative Professor at the University from Shinhan.
