Dongi Lee

Dongi Lee(b.1967) plays with the animated characters Atom from Japan and Mickey Mouse from the Walt Disney Company in the USA by combining them as Atomaus, thus symbolizing how Korean society cannot be free from outsider pop culture. However, borrowing the pop culture itself is not the main subject of his work. The artist collects and rearranges images and texts from today’s society. The title of the series Eclecticism consciously or unconsciously suggests his way of rearranging images from diverse sources. In his work the images from different contexts conflict on one canvas and they imply the complex relationship between conscious and unconscious, meaning and meaninglessness, main agent and non-agent. Eclecticism also gives an impression of the artist’s cynical attitude towards the idea of a highly productive artist who creates a new visual style or the myth about it.