Conversation
Dec 12, 2025
AYOUNG KIM AND KANG SEUNG LEE IN CONVERSATION
LOCATION
VIRTUAL
TIME
6pm-7:30pm
Story
Join GYOPO for a conversation featuring Ayoung Kim and Kang Seung Lee, two leading Korean contemporary artists who collaborated with GYOPO for its 2025 and 2024 artist editions, respectively. Each artist will discuss the bodies of work that inspired their editions, highlighting their unique approaches and thematic explorations of time and queerness across transhistorical, ahistorical, and speculative contexts. Flip Side Dancers, a lenticular print and this year’s edition by Seoul-based artist Ayoung Kim, draws from her acclaimed expansive Delivery Dancer series, which explores themes of time, capitalism, gender, queerness, and technological anxieties, to reflect on South Korea’s meteoric rise onto the global stage. Kang Seung Lee, a Los Angeles-based artist who has been a part of GYOPO's community since its inception, contributed the print Untitled (Tseng Kwong Chi wearing a "SLUTFORART" t-shirt) in 2024 that layers the works of two underrecognized queer artists, Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-90) and Martin Wong (1946-99). Their rich material worlds contrast through medium: Kim’s practice spans tech-influenced sculpture, video, and installation, while Lee primarily employs print, fabric, sculptures, organic matter, and graphite drawing. This program provides a platform for dialogue about their artistic practices within their respective contexts of Seoul and Los Angeles, and the queer networks that influence them.
Ayoung Kim
Ayoung Kim weaves reality anew through a tapestry of hybrid narratives while integrating geopolitics, mythology, technology and futuristic iconography in her work. The outcomes of synthesized narratives result in far-reaching speculation, establishing connections between biopolitics and border controls, the memories of stones and virtual memories, and ancestral origins and imminent futures in the forms of video, moving image, virtual reality, game simulation, installation, performance and texts.
Kim’s works have been presented at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2025); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2025); ACMI, Melbourne (2024); MoMA, New York (2024); M+, Hong Kong (2024); Sharjah Biennial (2023); Ars Electronica, Linz (2023); Berlin International Film Festival (2020); Gwangju Biennial (2018); Palais de Tokyo (2016) and the Venice Biennale (2015), among others. Kim has received the LG Guggenheim Award, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (2025), ACC Future Prize, National Asian Culture Center, Korea (2024), Golden Nica Award, Prix Ars Electronica, Austria (2023), and Terayama Shuji Prize, Image Forum Festival, Japan (2023) and was a supported artist for the Korea Artist Prize, Korea (2019).
Kang Seung Lee
Kang Seung Lee is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in South Korea and now lives and works in Los Angeles. His work frequently engages the legacy of transnational queer histories, particularly as they intersect with art history. Lee’s work has been included in international exhibitions such as the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Made in LA at Hammer Museum (2023); New Museum Triennial (2021); and Gwangju Biennale (2021).
Lee has had solo exhibitions and projects at Alexander Gray Associates, New York (2025); MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo), São Paulo (2024); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2023); Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Gallery Hyundai, Seoul (2021); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2021, 2017, 2016); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica (2020); One and J. Gallery, Seoul (2018); Artpace, San Antonio (2017); Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Los Angeles (2016); and Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont (2015).