Lee Seung Jio’s paintings create an optical illusion that blurs the boundary between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality. Differing from other Korean painters of the same era who wanted to express their most intimate sentiments through paintings, Lee seeks to present a rational, logical composition that embodies uniformity and objectivity. Lee also drew inspiration from his personal experience of traveling on a train, speeding through the landscapes. His flat and illusionistic Nucleus painting series recaptures the instantaneity and fleetingness of such experience. The constant movement exuded from undulating lines evokes a sense of psychological tension and restlessness.

Lee Seung Jio (1941-1990) is a pioneer of Korean geometric abstraction who emerged with the avant-garde group of artists in the 1960s. He studied in the Department of Western Painting at Hongik University in Seoul before going on to found the Origin Group in 1962 alongside his contemporaries Suh Seung-Won and Choi Myoung-Young. Unlike the Dansaekhwa artists who were grouped together only decades later by curators, the Origin painters––slightly younger than the Dansaekhwa artists––exhibited together from the movement’s onset, rallying around a commitment to rebel against national disorder and tumult through cool, unemotional abstraction. The Origin painters embraced the traditionally Western media of oil painting, perfecting their own practices and imbuing their paintings with a stark sense of duality between volume and flatness. The stark lines and hard edges of these works emerged in response to the decidedly more heated and emotional Korean Art Informel movement as a means of exploring how painting could become a more authentically Korean medium. Repetition and refinement functioned as the common threads throughout the works by these painters. Lee Seung Jio distinguished himself from his fellow Origin painters, garnering critical attention as his style matured and the other members began gaining repute internationally.