Kwangho Lee

Kwangho was born in Seoul. He majored in Metal Art & Design at Hongik University and graduated in February 2007.  As a child, Lee remembers watching his grandfather making all sorts of tools out of things he found in and around the house and nearby woods.  The house was full of his grandfather’s handcrafted inventions, and this became the inspiration for Lee’s future work as an artist and designer. He began to find, look at and approach things in the way his grandfather would have done, giving new meaning and function to everyday objects and materials. Kwangho Lee’s work is based on simple materials and actions: knitting and weaving together long bundles of thread made of skin, plastic and textiles.  These are then hung, stretched and assembled to create complex, colourful, spatial structures such as lamps, walls and grottoes that strongly alter the sense of the space in which they are installed. Kwangho’s repetitive weaving highlights the importance of a traditional handicraft that can reveal the potential of much of the industrial material that fills our lives and encourage us to recycle and reutilize ,much of our waste product by changing the way we live.  Images of his installations show how the work can interact with and as it were ‘contaminate’ contemporary spaces. Kwangho was nominated Designer of the Future at Design Miami/Basel in 2009. He was also selected as Artist of the Year 2011 by the Korean Ministry of Culture. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His creations have been featured in many major design publications worldwide.