Artist Yunsung Lee, who explores contemporary visual culture through the language of comics, presents 19 new works from the ‘Laocoon’ series along with The Ten Commandments in his solo exhibition 《Fragmentary》, on view at YK PRESENTS GALLERY from March 7 to April 3.
Building upon his ongoing investigation of contemporary visual culture through comic formats, the artist reinterprets the “Laocoon” sculpture—widely regarded as a masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture—into painting in this exhibition. The fragmented parts of the sculpture are distributed across separate canvases; the male figure is transformed into a female, while the serpent dissolves into a black background, subtly concealing parts of the body.
The severed limbs and fountains of blood that repeatedly appeared in his previous ‘Torso’ series disappear here, and instead, the works resemble enlarged black-and-white printed comics with pages seemingly cut apart. While partially obscuring or distorting the lifelike expression of the original Laocoon sculpture, the works simultaneously retain the spirit of classical art—characterized by restrained color, rich curves, and expressions that verge on ecstasy—which has inspired countless artists.
The figures that constitute the subject of Laocoon appear to be placed within a black void, as if they have vanished. Within this space, comic speech bubbles, as well as panel divisions and frames, are rendered in white paint. However, the text (dialogue) within the speech bubbles is entirely removed. Comic elements such as panels and frames, originally used to structure pages, become mere forms and objects within the painting. These objects obscure or recede behind the characters, generating a sense of space through a symbolic perspective.
According to the conventional format of comics, comics are an art of time and space that emerges conceptually between panels, and within the gaps between frames. However, this exhibition fills the gallery with 19 Laocoon figures of varying sizes, accompanied by countless fragments of signs—elements that feel somehow incomplete to be called panels or margins that structure time and space.
The exhibition is organized through a simple method that disrupts the symmetry of the perfect number three, by arranging three panels corresponding to the three figures of Laocoon, along with the faces derived from them, across the walls. Only one work, titled The Ten Commandments, is separated from the rest; this piece consists solely of speech bubbles extracted from the largest Laocoon triptych.
In Lee’s practice, which selectively appropriates both mythological and comic conventions, even the figure—one of the core elements—is entirely absent in The Ten Commandments, making it the only incomplete window within a space otherwise fully saturated with countless metaphors and signs.
