My work begins with a distrust of what an image seems to tell us immediately.
Kyungtaek Lee's work originates in years of travelling and encountering unfamiliar landscapes and communities. Rather than using photography simply to describe what he sees, Lee questions the apparent certainty of the photographic image and our tendency to accept it as an objective representation of reality.
In his earlier series No Man’s Land, Lee focuses on landscapes in which traces of human intervention coexist with nature and time. Roads, structures and other signs of occupation appear within environments that seem to be gradually absorbing them, raising questions about permanence, disappearance and the relationship between civilisation and the natural world.
This investigation develops further in Beyond the Visible, where Lee deliberately removes information from the photograph. Images are printed onto hanji, traditional South Korean artist based in Seoul whose practice explores photography as a space between documentation, memory and perception. Korean paper, then wetted and manually scrubbed so that areas of pigment disappear. The remaining image is remounted using baejeob, a traditional Korean mounting technique.
Through this physical process, a reproducible digital photograph becomes a unique material object. By erasing rather than adding information, Lee invites the viewer to slow down, question what appears to be visible and consider what may exist beyond the image.
Photography can make us believe that we understand a person, a place or an experience at a glance. By removing information from the image, I try to interrupt that certainty and create space for other possible readings.
I print my photographs on traditional Korean hanji paper and physically erase parts of their surface by hand. Through this process, the photograph moves away from being simply a record of reality and becomes a material object shaped by time, touch and absence.
What disappears is as important as what remains. I want the viewer to look more slowly and to discover, within those absences, new possibilities of perception.
Kyungtaek Lee (b. 1983) is a South Korean artist based in Seoul whose practice explores the boundaries between photography, materiality and perception. Rather than approaching the photographic image simply as a means of recording reality, Lee uses it as a space through which to question how images shape our understanding of people, places and the world around us.
His practice has developed through years of travelling and working in different environments, where encounters with unfamiliar landscapes and communities led him to question the apparent certainty of photographic representation. Instead of using photography to explain what he sees, Lee is interested in what remains unresolved: the distance between an image and the reality it claims to represent, and the possibilities that emerge when information is deliberately withheld.
These concerns became central to No Man’s Land, a body of work examining landscapes marked by the coexistence of human intervention, nature and time. Roads, architectural structures and traces of human presence appear within environments that seem to be gradually transforming or reclaiming them. Rather than presenting these places as fixed documents, Lee creates images in which permanence and disappearance remain deliberately ambiguous.
This investigation develops further in Beyond the Visible, where the artist moves beyond the photographic act and intervenes directly in the physical surface of the image. Lee prints his photographs on hanji, traditional Korean paper, before wetting and manually scrubbing the surface to remove areas of pigment. Selected fragments are then remounted using baejeob, a traditional Korean mounting technique.
The process introduces an important paradox into his work. Hanji has historically been associated with the preservation of documents and images; Lee instead uses this material as the surface upon which an act of erasure takes place. An infinitely reproducible digital photograph is transformed through the artist’s hand into a unique physical object, carrying the traces of its own alteration.
Erasure, however, is not used simply as an act of destruction. By removing visual information, Lee interrupts the immediate readability of the photograph. Context, landscape and sometimes the human figure partially disappear, preventing the image from resolving itself into a single interpretation. What remains asks the viewer to look more slowly and to consider what cannot be contained within a photographic image.
This questioning of the speed with which contemporary images are produced and consumed lies at the heart of Lee’s recent practice. In a visual culture increasingly defined by immediacy, his work proposes photography as a place for uncertainty, contemplation and multiple readings. The image moves from record to perception, and from representation to material experience.
Lee’s work has gained increasing international visibility in recent years, with exhibitions and presentations in France, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Japan, South Korea and Spain. Recent solo presentations include Beyond the Visible at the Arles OFF Festival – A Space for Photography, Arles (2026); No Man’s Land at The Thousand Kyoto as part of KYOTOGRAPHIE KG+ Special Exhibition, Kyoto (2026); No Man’s Land – Zero Point at Hangaram Design Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul (2026); and No Man’s Land at Helix Art Space, Stockholm (2026).
Previous exhibitions include Beyond the Visible at Galeries Joseph, Paris (2025); No Man’s Land at the Arles OFF Festival – A Space for Photography (2025) and Paris Photo Days, Paris (2025); Unforeseen at Gallery Shadows during the Arles OFF Festival (2024); an invited solo exhibition at Artrevel, P&I, COEX, Seoul (2017); and Where the ‘Halman’ Stayed at Jeju Haenyeo Museum, Jeju (2016).
His work has also been presented at international photography and contemporary art fairs including Photo Basel in 2025 and 2026, MIA Photo Fair in Milan in 2026, Seoul Art Fair in 2024 and Korea Galleries Art Fair in 2024.
In 2026–2027, Galería Isolina Arbulu presents Lee’s work in Marbella, bringing No Man’s Land and Beyond the Visibleinto dialogue as successive chapters of his ongoing investigation into photography, disappearance and the limits of the visible.
