The appearance of cacti makes people unable to resist touching them
Many people's first impression of cacti is that they have lots of spines and prick your hands. Quite a few friends have also kept cacti. When I was little, I also kept one on the balcony at home. In my memory, it was a fairly low-maintenance plant, left in a corner of the balcony for a long time, and even if you forgot to water it, it would not easily die.
In recent years, with the rise of the Nordic style, cacti have gradually become trendy internet-famous plants, and their prices have risen along with it. Cacti and plants of the same family can now be seen in some flower shops, restaurants, clothing stores, guesthouses, and even people's homes.
The artist we are introducing today used cacti as inspiration to create a series of oil paintings, and very "humanely" titled the work "Touch".
Kwangho Lee
As one of South Korea's realist artists, Kwangho Lee found that the tiny spines all over cacti keep people at a distance, and he wanted to create cacti that people could affectionately touch.
The cacti under artist Kwangho Lee's brush are lifelike, giving the illusion that they are photographic works or retouched photos.
Compared with real ones, the cacti in the paintings are on the larger side, roughly 8 feet (about 20 cm). Every tiny spine, flower, and branch is extremely vivid and accurate, with even the smallest element brought into focus.
Kwangho Lee's artistic style is suited to opaque large canvases. This gives the works a more elevated sense of color and makes them more striking. The colors are very realistic, becoming a high form of realism. Let us enjoy this artist's recent works as well as his past masterpieces together!
Perhaps you may think that today, with contemporary photography and Photoshop technology so advanced, there is no point in painting this kind of hyperrealism. But realism is only one expressive method of painting; what Kwangho Lee wants to express is the extension between the work and vision.
The strange thing about cacti is that you really want to touch them, to touch these images of strange, sharp, fluffy branches full of fuzz.
Exhibited at Kukje Gallery in South Korea
Works currently on display and being touched
Kwangho Lee graduated from Seoul National University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 2006, he was selected as a Changdong resident artist. In his early work, he often liked to observe insignificant small objects in daily life, to feel their world, and to seek some kind of connection between his own inner self and these insignificant things.
Therefore, he likes to photograph an object and then paint it. The aim is to reveal and dramatize these subtle connections.
Details of the painting
From the image, one can feel that the works under Kwangho Lee's brush are not especially beautiful or nostalgic, but through careful observation and magnification, the depicted object actually disappears, and one sees only a layer of paint made up of countless brushstrokes and knife marks.
We are surrounded by all kinds of insignificant small objects
Stamens, bubbles, leaf veins, moths
Imagine what they would look like when magnified
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ins: @_kwangho_lee Text editor: fffloral
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