Dongi Lee
PROFILE
Dongi Lee is a leading figure of the first generation of Korean artists to incorporate popular culture into contemporary art in the early 1990s. In 1993, he created Atomaus, a hybrid character combining Japan’s Astro Boy with America’s Mickey Mouse. By merging iconic figures from different cultural spheres, Lee raised questions surrounding cultural hybridity, appropriation, and originality.
His practice, however, extends far beyond Atomaus. Drawing from comics, advertising, the internet, television dramas, classical painting, modernism, and abstraction, Lee collects and reconstructs images circulating through contemporary culture. Across diverse series—including Eclecticism, Bubbles, Flower Garden, Virtual Insanity, Soap Opera, Words, and Abstract Painting—figuration and abstraction, high culture and low culture, reality and fiction coexist within flat, graphical compositions.
Treating existing images as mutable signs that reflect the conditions of their time, Lee’s work is held in major institutional collections, including the Leeum Museum of Art, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), and the Seoul Museum of Art, as well as museums across China and Taiwan. Building upon the legacy of Pop Art, he reconfigures the vast visual culture surrounding contemporary life to render its underlying cultural and social structures visible through painting.
BIOGRAPHY
1967 Born in Seoul, Korea
1990 B.F.A., Painting, Hongik University
1995 M.F.A., Painting, Hongik University
PAST EXHIBITIONS
Solo Exhibitions (Selected)：
2026 “Nothing is Forever” Gallery NoW, Seoul
2025 “ATOMAUS” Shinsegae Gallery, Seoul
2024 “Multiplied Atomaus +” Sho+1, Tokyo
2023 “Half/Half”, Ulsan Art Museum, Ulsan, Korea
2022 “Uncontrollable” Space ISU, Seoul
2021 “Redux Atomaus” Sho+1, Tokyo
2021 “Dongi Lee : Pentagon” PIBI Gallery, Seoul
2020 “ATOMAUS” NYB Gallery, Kirkland, WA, USA
2019 “Welcome to My World” Banyan Tree Club & Spa, Seoul
2019 “Lee Dongi, 1993-2014: Back to the future” PIBI Gallery, Seoul
2018 “Hashtag” Handok Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy, Eumsung, Korea
2018 “Words” Gallery 2, Seoul
2018 “Lee Dongi: 2015-2018” PIBI Gallery, Seoul
2017 “Dongi Lee” CL Art, Seoul
2017 “Dongi Lee Unplugged” Gallery 2, Jungsun Nongwon, Jeju, Korea
2016 “Abyss” Gallery 2, Seoul
2014 “Zero Gravity” GALLERY HYUNDAI, Seoul
2013 “Don’t Look Back in Anger” Songwon Art Center, Seoul
2012 “Garden of Uncertainty” Gallery 2, Seoul
2011 “Role Playing Game” Lotte Gallery, Seoul
2010 “Bittersweet” Gallery 2, Seoul
2009 “Double Vision” Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin, Germany
2008 “Double Vision” Gallery 2, Seoul
2008 “Bubbles” Gallery 2, Seoul
2008 “Dongi Lee” Keumsan Gallery, Tokyo
2008 “Bubbles” Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2007 “Atomaus” Gallery Mook, Beijing, China
2006 “Smoking” One and J Gallery, Seoul
2003 “Crash” IImin Museum of Art, Seoul
2002 “Lee Dongi” Kobayashi Gallery, Tokyo
2001 “The Adventures of Atomaus” Gallery Dong Dong, Seoul
Group Exhibitions (Selected)：
2025 “Faces – Expressions Through the Face” Sho+1, Tokyo
2025 “The Second Skin” ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul
2025 “Art Palm Beach + Contemporary 2025” NYB Gallery, Florida, USA
2024 “In Synchrony” 333 Gallery, Seoul
2024 “Move, Sound, Image” Ground Seoul, Seoul
2024 “Seattle Art Fair 2024” NYB Gallery, Seattle, USA
2024 “The Dots II” gallery NoW, Seoul
2024 “The Roses of Sharon Have Blossomed” Cheonan Museum of Art, Cheonan, Korea
2023 “《2023 Title Match》Dongi Lee vs. Sangwoo Kang” Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
2023 「Back to the Future: An Exploration of Contemporaneity in Korean Contemporary Art」National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
2023 “ART FAIR ASIA FUKUOKA (AFAF)” Sho+1, Fukuoka
2023 “Room of Inspiration” Gallery Royal, Seoul
2022 “Paik Nam June Effect” National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea
2022 “The Moments We Encounter” Suwon Museum of Art, Suwon, Korea
2022 “Illusion of Reality” GINZA TSUTAYA BOOKS FOAM COMTEMPORARY, Tokyo
2022 “Art Fair Tokyo 2022” Sho+1, Tokyo
2021 “Art Fair Tokyo 2021” Sho+1, Tokyo
2021 “Art Busan 2022” PIBI Gallery, Busan, Korea 2020 “artTNZ” Sho+1, Tokyo
COLLECTIONS
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea
Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul
OFFICIAL LINK