Art Monte-Carlo 2026

LEE & BAE presents five Korean contemporary artists-Sungjae Lee, Bongsang Yoo, Seunghee Lee, Sungpil Chae and Sangmin Lee-at Art Monte-Carlo 2026. Sungjae Lee constructs geometric structures through meticulous manual labor, bringing into visibility things that have been forgotten or have disappeared, as well as people and landscapes so ordinary that they often go unnoticed. He lingers on the lives of mothers who have quietly lived like air or soil while tending to household work, and on the feelings of children that have been dismissed as “trivial.” Bongsang Yoo creates dreamlike landscapes using hundreds of thousands of tiny pins. He reconstructs residual traces of perception—accumulated impressions of time—bringing them back to the surface. His work is built through slow, meditative repetition, hammering countless headless pins into panels. These pins form topographies, define direction, and create textures that interact with light and shadow. This entirely manual and physical process emphasizes not emotion or narrative, but labor itself. Each consistent strike, interval, and angle functions not merely as craft, but as a structural operation. Seunghee Lee’s ceramic paintings can be understood as the culmination of decades of artistic exploration, as well as a pioneering vision that challenges conventional frameworks. Through increasingly refined repetitions and layered applications of slip, his work reaches a fundamental state in which ornamentation and narrative are absorbed into a unified form—embodying an Eastern minimalism that approaches the essence of ceramics. Sungpil Chae expresses the origin of nature through the forms of earth and water. Rather than crafting images through controlled, artificial techniques, he allows the traces left by earth and water to create organic, spontaneous forms. To him, earth is more than a material—it is a site of history, the foundation of human existence, and a symbol of both cultural identity and universal continuity. Earth becomes pigment through its interaction with water, and it is with water that the painting takes form. Even when the water has fully evaporated, it leaves behind marks. The final works embody not only images of nature but the very essence of primordial space. The glass paintings of Sangmin Lee, who explores the aesthetics of light and shadow in his Ceramic Series, prompt self-reflection by engaging with the patience and will accumulated over time, beyond easily perceived surface images. Experiencing this evolving flow of thought through his artistic practice offers a meaningful encounter.