The “Rice grain” image is a metaphorical unit used by the artist to describe microscopic visual elements. Dots, particles, and small forms may appear insignificant individually, yet through repetition and accumulation they generate a larger spatial field. These micro-units reveal space not as a simple sum, but as an emergent structure. The rice grain image visually articulates the connection between the microscopic and the macroscopic.
 
In Lee’s work, space is never presented as a stable or fixed structure. Aggregations of color that disperse like particles, repeating geometric forms, and layered gestures disrupt a single, authoritative viewpoint. As a result, the viewer is compelled to constantly recalibrate their sense of scale—moving between the microscopic and the monumental, the interior and the exterior, the flat surface and the illusion of depth. Through this perceptual oscillation, Lee reasserts painting as a sensory field rather than a representational image.
 
In his recent works, geometric imagery and the formal elements of abstract painting have become more pronounced. Yet despite this structural clarity, drawing remains fundamental to his practice. The artist’s gestures—traces of movement, rhythm, and tempo—function as events within the pictorial space. These marks do not describe a predetermined structure but instead register a space that is in the process of becoming. Lee’s paintings resist closure, remaining open as dynamic configurations that continuously form and dissolve.
 
Within contemporary Korean art discourse, Lee Kangwook’s practice has been described as “Painting articulated through sensory illusion” and situated within the trajectory of Korean Neo-Abstraction. Such evaluations point not merely to stylistic classification, but to a sustained inquiry into how abstraction can engage perception, cognition, and embodied experience today. Lee’s paintings do not aim to visualize invisible space alone; they ultimately question how we perceive, imagine, and inhabit the world itself.