Ho-Ryon Lee

His images look like double-exposed photos, but they are paintings – part of a series titled Overlapping Image.
At first, it may look quite easy, as many painters today use digital photography as part of their research and sketching to initially shape their work, but Lee’s work is a lot more sophisticated.
His images animate the characters he is depicting, showing an extreme control of timing and transparency between each layer so that you can see a full sequence of human movement in one still image.
The first layers are more transparent and the last layer is almost opaque. His images are as if you are watching a scene in stroboscope light, with an after-image from the previous flash remaining on your retina while new imagery is travelling towards you visual cortex.

The subject matter for his paintings is the female body and mostly represented as anonymous individuals (we hardly never see a clear face in his paintings). His focus is always in the genital region of the body and often seen from behind. His imagery contains strong a male gaze and it is up to the viewer to interpret what it means. Is he expressing his maleness as voyeur, or, is it a feminist expression of power as we all enter this world by exiting from a woman’s crotch? There is something very primal in his highly photorealistic paintings. Perhaps there are echoes in his work, similar to Medieval Sheela-na-gigs (stone carvings with females exposing exaggerated genitals).
In any case there is a lust and appraisal in his imagery and colours that are inherently seductive.

Very little seems to be known about Lee. Perhaps it is typical of this generation of painters, to avoid having their own portrait on-line. We know that he is Korean and according to his CV, he has both a Bachelors and Masters in Fine Art. Since 2006 he has been exhibiting his work in Korea, Singapore, USA, and Germany.