Installation view of 《100% REFURB SHOW》 © Gaain Gallery

A solo exhibition by Lee Inhyeon titled 《100% REFURB SHOW》 will be held at Gaain Gallery in Pyeongchang-dong. Working with raw, untreated canvas and blue oil paint to produce pared-down compositions, Lee has, under the overarching title ‘L’episteme of Painting’, persistently pursued questions concerning the essence of painting and its modes of existence—materiality and image, frontality and laterality, flatness and literalness.

Marking his first exhibition in six years since 2006, this presentation demonstrates a range of solutions that have evolved through the artist’s sustained engagement with these longstanding inquiries. He recycles scraps and studio rags generated in the process of making works, and attaches “objects” such as work tables, brushes, coffee cups, or even a child’s shoes onto “paintings,” thereby suggesting that every artwork may be “refurbished” into a new role for another artwork, and that every object may assume a renewed function in relation to others.

By employing the exhibition space itself as though it were the frame of a painting, he reactivates questions posed by the frame; by stacking works produced more than a decade apart, he reveals the contextual layering of images; and by introducing the concept of “featuring,” he overlaps his own works with those of artist Jung Kwangho, presenting the physical cohabitation of sculpture devoid of mass and painting endowed with thickness. These diverse strategies collectively draw attention to the exhibition.

The term “refurb,” used in the exhibition title, derives from a relatively recent marketing expression. A shortened form of “refurbish,” meaning “to renew” or “to renovate,” it refers to the repackaging and resale of display items returned due to a change of mind, or products with minor cosmetic flaws that pose no practical issues, or goods with slightly damaged packaging. In effect, it denotes an item that is neither entirely new nor used, but “refurbished”—virtually indistinguishable from a new product.

In contemporary art, every exhibition presupposes “inventory” from the moment it opens. Once the packaging is removed and the image is encountered, it seems already to become something no longer new. Viewers demand new works; artists suffer from the compulsion to produce them, endlessly seeking new images. Yet replacing images with new images merely perpetuates the vicious cycle of image excess. The core of this exhibition lies in “refurbishing” images that are functionally flawless but lack the aura of newness—in other words, images from which only the condition of novelty has been removed.


Lee Inhyeon, L’episteme of Painting - Refurbished, 2012, Oil on canvas, 40 x 120 x 10 cm © Lee Inhyeon

For viewers anticipating “new works” by the artist, this exhibition may, at first glance, prove disappointing. It consists entirely of recomposed and reconfigured existing works—100% previously presented works, with no new productions. However, for those curious to see how Lee Inhyeon’s persistent exploration of the strata of painting—that is, his sustained inquiry into the essence and mode of existence of painting—has progressed toward this condition of “refurbishment,” the exhibition promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking event.

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