Lee Kang So: A Field of Becoming Art Gallery Shows to See in June

By Andrew Russeth

More than 20 years have passed since Lee Kang So, a giant in his native South Korea, last had a solo exhibition in New York. This show of 30 works ends that drought by nimbly charting his multifarious practice over the past half-century, as he progressed from radical experimentalist to celebrated painter.

The highlights are seven large canvases from the past few decades — brushy and assured compositions in black, white and gray, some with traces of figuration, like the outlines of a deer’s head or a floating duck, one of Lee’s signature motifs. (A two-person show with the similarly enigmatic Susan Rothenberg, who also depicted animals, would be enriching.)

The most recent painting, “The Wind Blows-26047” (2026), suggests broad calligraphic marks caught in a storm, evanescing in a world that is always in flux, entropic, a defining focus for Lee. He has made ceramics by dropping hunks of clay atop one another, letting gravity and chance take their course, and in photographs from 1977, he sculpts sand along a river in Daegu into different shapes: earthworks destined to deteriorate. (“A Field of Becoming” is the show’s fitting title.)

Lee’s approach carries a clear ethos: Try to make beautiful things, even though they won’t last, maybe even because they won’t last. In an early video, also from 1977, he stands in front of the screen, painting it until he has disappeared. Then the tape cuts, and he begins again.