Encore

Looking into the Cracks of Everyday Life — Painter Lee Ho-cheol

Lee Ho-cheol was born in Seoul in 1958. A graduate of Hongik University, he has steadily pursued his artistic practice with a focus on painting and printmaking. Without making grand pronouncements, he has consistently refined his own visual language, devoting many years to exploring the possibilities of figurative painting.

Awards and Exhibitions
Lee first came to public attention in 1978 when he received an Encouragement Award at the 1st JoongAng Fine Arts Prize Exhibition. He later solidified his standing as an artist by winning consecutive honors, including the Monte Carlo Art Grand Prize Exhibition in 1990 and the Grand Prize at the Gongshin Art Festival in 1994. Yet more striking than his impressive record of awards is the unwavering continuity of his practice. Rather than being swept along by external trends or artistic movements, Lee has persistently questioned and developed his own painterly language.

His exhibition history is equally substantial. In 1990, he held his first solo exhibition at Kumho Museum of Art, and since then he has presented approximately twenty-five solo exhibitions at major Korean galleries including Noh Gallery, Pyo Gallery, Arario, and Sun Gallery. He has also been active on the international stage, participating in such events as the International Impact Art Festival in Kyoto, the 8th JAALA Exhibition in Tokyo, and Fifty Years of Korean Contemporary Painting at Seoul Gallery, along with more than 300 group and invited exhibitions in Korea and abroad. This sustained record of showing his work not only in solo exhibitions but also through group and curated exhibitions demonstrates how faithfully he has remained engaged with the art world over the years.

Artistic World — Landscapes Inside Drawers
Art critic Seo Seong-rok has remarked that looking at Lee Ho-cheol’s paintings feels like reading a diary. Ordinary objects encountered in daily life — dining tables, glasses, chairs, drawers, neckties, clocks, bags, coffee cups, gloves, hats, ballpoint pens, and laptops — fill his canvases. Like a room whose owner has briefly stepped away, these objects rest quietly in their proper places. A stillness, as though time itself had stopped like a broken clock, envelops the entire image.

Yet this quietude is not simply that of a conventional still life. As one looks more closely, strange details begin to emerge. Within a half-open drawer unfolds a distant sky; endless railroad tracks appear; a hazy field comes into view. Hats and gloves drift freely in midair, while objects far larger than the drawers themselves are somehow contained within them. In this way, a world beyond reality suddenly intrudes into the realm of the everyday.

His paintings may appear faithful to daily life, but in fact they are open toward what lies beyond it. The whole and the unexpected, the rational and the irrational, consciousness and the unconscious collide within a single frame. From the tension born of these collisions, the viewer gains the freedom to dream. Anyone exhausted by the repetitive cycle of everyday life may feel a sense of release in front of his paintings, as though finally able to breathe more freely.

Peeking In — Drawers Not Yet Opened
This act of “peeking in” is a key language running throughout Lee’s work. The greatest charm of his paintings lies in the moment when a closed drawer opens and an entirely different world unfolds beyond the gap. His paintings skillfully awaken a psychology akin to the thrill of receiving a parcel and wondering what might be inside, or the curiosity one feels about the backstage just before a theater curtain rises.

What is important is that the drawers are never fully open. They are half-open, or even when open, their interiors are angled away from view so that the whole cannot be seen. Many more drawers remain firmly shut. This very refusal to reveal everything stimulates the viewer’s imagination all the more powerfully. Suggestive devices such as shadows cast from windows, awnings, and carefully rendered interior structures support this effect.

Breaking the Frame — Moving Beyond the Picture
Lee Ho-cheol’s work does not stop at drawers and objects; it extends its interest to the very frame of painting itself. In his works, the frame is already painted within the picture, making an external frame unnecessary. By drawing the frame into the painting, he transforms it into a central pictorial element.

Taking this a step further, Lee has also experimented with altering the shape of the canvas itself. Moving away from the conventional rectangular format, he has actively embraced a variety of shaped canvases. This is an act of breaking down the boundary between inside and outside the painting. It expresses not merely a desire to dream of freedom within an imaginary pictorial space, but a will to bring that freedom into actual space. In works featuring white porcelain, including moon jars, he delicately depicts the marks left by the potter’s wheel and the traces of white clay on the ceramic surface, creating a distinctive painterly texture in which brushstrokes can almost feel abstract.

Collections
Lee Ho-cheol’s works are held in the collections of numerous institutions and corporations, including Samsung Group, the Seoul Museum of Art, Asiana Airlines, Kukdong Group, Gongyeong Construction, Chunggu Group, Bosung Group, Hanjin Group, Kumho Group, Woobang Construction, Daewoo Group, Dong-A Group, Hanshin Engineering & Construction, Newcore, Kookje Group, Poonglim Group, Youngchang Piano, Anam Watch, Severance Hospital, Yangju City Museum of Art, Samsung Medical Center, Arario Group, the Judicial Research and Training Institute, Asan Medical Center, the Busan Museum of Art, Daejeon Museum of Art, Gwangju Museum of Art, and the Jeonnam Museum of Art.

Overseas, his works are also housed in collections in places including the Embassy of Mexico, Poland, Hong Kong, Dubai, Nigeria, Spain, Belarus, Belgium, Shanghai, Monaco, Türkiye, Scandinavia, Bolivia, South Africa, and Greece.