DOOSAN Gallery New York is pleased to announce the first New York solo exhibition of Korea-based sculptor Dongwook Lee’s Love Me Tender. The exhibition features five of his remarkable sculptures and three latest works which reflect his ongoing investigation of delicateness and tenderness of being- in-general.

Lee creates tiny human figures that mainly concentrate on human bodies and facial expressions that stimulate extremely delicate effect. He places the figures under intensely painful situations in their most awkward and extreme moments such as inside a can like anchovies and hanging on a hook as fishing hook. In his newest works, Lee attempts to go one step further by deconstructing and deforming the visual elements in the same sense of the tenderness.

Lee’s sculptural work concentrates on being-in-general whose misery has been assigned, tenderly portraying people in their most intimate, isolated, and vulnerable moments. The expression of his figurative objects is subtly exaggerated to raise the viewer’s emotional resonance, so they might remind their own sufferings through Lee’s grotesque figures. As a result, the level of desperation to a climax and its strange cruelty compel us to look closely on our daily life and essence of human being. The tenderness of Lee’s works evokes a range of human situations such as defenselessness and helplessness, and pitiful and compassionate responses.

Dongwook Lee was born in 1976 in Seoul, Korea. He received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Painting from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. He has had solo exhibitions at ARARIO GALLERY (2011, Seoul, Korea), Total Museum of Contemporary Art (2011, Seoul, Korea), and Avanthay Contemporary (2008, Zurich, Switzerland). His work has also been included in group exhibitions at Uppsala Art Museum (2011, Uppsala, Sweden), Galleri Charlotte Lund (2011, Stockholm, Sweden), The National Museum of Contemporary Art (2009, Gwacheon, Korea), Saatchi Gallery (2009, London, UK) and Peres Project (2007, Berlin, Germany). He was a DOOSAN Residency New York fellow of second period of 2011.