Museum Exhibitions
Lee Kang So: Flowing Water, Ongoing Experiment Solo retrospective at the Daegu Art Museum
9 September 2025—22 February 2026
Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, South Korea
Daegu Art Museum holds Flowing Water, Ongoing Experiment, a retrospective of Lee Kang So, who has been a leader in Korean contemporary art. This exhibition includes the artist’s journey across half a century from the sites of experimental art in the 1970s to the present. It is his first large-scale one-person exhibition the Daegu Art Museum presents in 14 years, since the museum-opening special exhibition Emptiness 11- I- 1 in 2011.
The exhibition surveys Lee Kang So’s art realm via the two axes of Gok-su-ji-yu (play beside water flowing in curves) and the experimental spirit. Gok-su-ji-yu refers to the East’s traditional refined leisure culture of floating a wine bowl on running water and spontaneously creating a poem before the bowl passes. Such a custom was passed down in the East Asian cultural sphere including Korea, and in one of the most well-known records of it is a gathering the Eastern Jin period calligrapher Wang Xizhi enjoyed at Lanting (lit. Orchid Pavilion) in 353. The method of thinking and sharing art as if flowing in nature’s order resembles the artistic spirit Lee Kang So has been pursuing his whole life.
The exhibition surveys Lee Kang So’s art realm via the two axes of Gok-su-ji-yu (play beside water flowing in curves) and the experimental spirit. Gok-su-ji-yu refers to the East’s traditional refined leisure culture of floating a wine bowl on running water and spontaneously creating a poem before the bowl passes. Such a custom was passed down in the East Asian cultural sphere including Korea, and in one of the most well-known records of it is a gathering the Eastern Jin period calligrapher Wang Xizhi enjoyed at Lanting (lit. Orchid Pavilion) in 353. The method of thinking and sharing art as if flowing in nature’s order resembles the artistic spirit Lee Kang So has been pursuing his whole life.
