Lee Seung Jio (1941–1990) was a pioneering figure in postwar Korean geometric abstraction and a founding member of the avant-garde groups Origin (1962–) and AG (1969–1975). Amid Korea’s rapid modernization, Lee developed a distinctive visual language through his iconic Nucleus series—often referred to as his “pipe” paintings—where cylindrical forms dissolve the boundary between two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional space. Executed with flat brushes, masking tape, and sandpaper, his precise, rational compositions stood apart from the gestural energy of Korean Art Informel and the later material focus of Dansaekhwa, establishing him as a singular voice who translated industrial aesthetics into a rigorous painterly vocabulary.

In the 1980s, Lee refined the Nucleus vocabulary into compositions of heightened structural clarity and optical depth, most often deploying a restrained black-and-white (and silvery gray) palette. These works draw viewers into contemplative, illusionistic spaces while sustaining the series’ disciplined repetition and mechanically smooth surfaces. While his all-black canvases appeared in the late 1970s, the 1980s paintings broaden this chromatic restraint into cool, monochrome fields that emphasize rhythm, perception, and the translation of contemporary conditions into rigorous compositional structures.

Nucleus 85-1 (1985) exemplifies this mature language. Vertical tubular forms are arrayed in a tight cadence across the canvas, each modeled with seamless gradations that produce a metallic, near-sculptural presence while remaining resolutely planar. The black-and-white tonality intensifies the work’s meditative clarity: dark termini anchor the composition at top and bottom, while the luminous cores of each cylinder create a pulsing optical rhythm that moves the eye up and down the surface. Here, Lee fuses mechanical precision with contemplative restraint, transforming the pipe motif into a condensed field of perception—at once object-like and immaterial, measured and vibratory.