hammer & nail painting

The ’nail‘ that penetrate the canvas(panel) become a painting, and the world of ‘nail painting’ completed behind the canvas!

To paint with Lee Don-soon's hammer

Artist Lee Don-soon is known for his so-called nail painting(鐵釘繪畵). It is literally a work of hammering various nails on a wooden board. Lee Don-soon's nail painting is a work of hundreds or even tens of thousands of nails. In the case of works that project the sharp nails on the back to the front, they even look like they were grown on a wooden board like plants.

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Lee Don-soon's "To paint with a Hammer" sounds as if it was shouting for us to part with the familiar art. So to speak, just as Nietzsche smashes existing ideal philosophy with a hammer, Lee Don-soon flips over existing art concepts with a hammer. Needless to say, art painting with Lee Don-soon's hammer goes beyond the destruction of the existing art concept (value judgment) and establishes a new value judgment (art concept). Lee Don-soon is not painting a picture that can be seen with the eyes, but rather a painting that cannot be seen with the eyes. So isn't doing art with his hammer an act of resistance to himself? Maybe he's hammering his own misery so he won't fall into dogma? Ironically, however, his act of resisting himself with a hammer is creating a new painting.

(Ryu Byoung-hak, Art critic)