《Unfinished Flora—Lee Soyo》, an exhibition introducing the research-based art of Lee Soyo, whose practice moves between art and scholarship, has been on view at Buk-Seoul Museum of Art since December 4, 2025.

Presented as part of the museum’s 《Artists’ Research》 series, the exhibition features Notes to Illustrations of Joseon Plants: A Selection of Toxic Plants (2021–present), Lee’s research-based art project exploring the cultural history of biological specimens through the academic frameworks of art history, natural history, and biology. 


Lee Soyo, 'Illustrated Flora of Korea: Poisonous Plants, Annotations', 2021–present, Eight installation works, each comprising a set of Episode Drawing, Plant Specimen, and Reference Materials for an individual plant species © Lee Soyo

In discussions of artworks, the term “research” is often invoked as either the starting point of creation or a means of legitimizing a work. Research in this sense generally remains a source of inspiration acquired by the artist during the preparatory stages preceding creation. When speaking of “research-based art,” however, to what extent can research genuinely determine the internal logic through which an artwork is produced?

Lee defines research as an approach that builds upon what has already been established within a genealogy of knowledge—that is, prior research. At its center lies collective intelligence engaged in dialogue across time and space, and research has developed into a systematic form of knowledge through the practices of reference and citation.

Illustrations of Joseon Plants: A Selection of Toxic Plants (1948) constitutes the prior research to which the artist adds her “annotations” in this exhibition. Do Bongseop and Shim Hakjin sought to compile the flora of the Korean Peninsula through direct observation and collection, but their record remained unfinished; it has since continued to be supplemented through citation and interpretation by numerous researchers.

As an artist, Lee joined this ongoing study of the Korean Peninsula’s flora. Alongside a meta-study comparing floras published in North and South Korea since the 1940s, she has spent several years surveying the peninsula’s present-day vegetation by locating plant habitats and conducting field collection and observation.

The 'Comparative Illustration Charts' series (2025), displayed on the gallery walls, traces and documents how botanical knowledge—including the illustrations and descriptions recorded in the book—was cited and modified in subsequent research. As such, the series may itself be understood as a research outcome grounded in scientific and empirical methodologies.

The question is how this process, which qualifies as research, is transformed into art. Because the language of research and the forms of art cannot be logically deduced from one another, a creative leap necessarily exists between research and the artwork. Rather than grounding this leap in a concept or narrative, Lee locates it in formal decisions arising from research.

These decisions emerge through her distinctive process of producing biological specimens: selecting what is to be preserved, segmenting and arranging the preserved material, and determining how drawings and documents are positioned.


Lee Soyo, 'Illustrated Flora of Korea: Poisonous Plants, Annotations', 'Comparative Illustration Charts' series, 2025 © Lee Soyo

The installation works, created by processing plants and research materials collected during Lee’s survey of the Korean Peninsula’s vegetation into preserved materials and drawings, embody the totality of these formal judgments. Plant Specimen consists of individual plant components—such as leaves, flowers, and seeds—that have been separately preserved and collaged onto specimen sheets.

Rather than presenting plants in their natural state, the work reconstructs specific moments or conditions selected during the research process so that they appear beautifully composed within a single visual plane. Similarly, Episode Drawing expresses through writing and drawing the artist’s thoughts and images that arose while collecting, examining, and processing plants.

This relates to the iconographic nature inherent in the specimen format itself. Although a specimen may appear to present objective fact, it is in reality the product of a maker’s emotions and subjectivity, which enter through processes of selection, removal, and arrangement. A specimen is therefore both an instrument for producing knowledge and an object requiring visual and formal composition.

From this perspective, the installation may be interpreted as preserving the state reached through the artist’s research in an artistic form, through formal judgments that rearrange specimens according to methods of classification and criteria of selection derived from that research.

Without equating research and art, the exhibition demonstrates where the creative leap between them becomes possible through the distinctive methodology of specimen-making, which is rooted in the artist’s scholarly expertise. The exhibition continues through March 22.

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