🇰🇷The Korean Painter Who Turned Landscapes Into Thousands of Colors 🎨

At first glance, Lee Daiwon’s paintings look like peaceful Korean landscapes. But the closer you get, the more incredible they become. Instead of painting mountains, orchards and trees with smooth blocks of color, Lee Daiwon built his landscapes with countless tiny strokes and dots — pink, blue, yellow, green and red layered over one another until the whole scene seems to vibrate. Lee Daiwon: Nothing Here Makes You Sad is the first major retrospective dedicated to the Korean artist at MMCA, bringing together works from across his career. What surprised me most was how different the paintings feel in person. From a distance, you see a mountain or an apple tree. Up close, the landscape almost disappears into thousands of individual marks of color. His subjects were often incredibly ordinary — the countryside, orchards, mountains and the nature he remembered from childhood — but he transformed them into something much more vivid and dreamlike. There’s also something especially beautiful about seeing the progression of his work in one exhibition. Earlier paintings feel more figurative and restrained, while later landscapes become increasingly filled with color and rhythm. And then there’s the setting: the exhibition is held at MMCA Deoksugung, inside Deoksugung Palace, so you can see the exhibition and explore one of Seoul’s royal palaces in the same visit. 📍 MMCA Deoksugung, Seoul 🎨 Lee Daiwon: Nothing Here Makes You Sad ✨ Best for: Korean modern art, painting & hidden cultural experiences in Seoul If you want to discover a Korean artist beyond the names you usually see internationally, this exhibition is absolutely worth adding to your Seoul art list. #leedaiwon #mmcadeoksugung #koreanart #koreanmodernart #seoulexhibition #seoulart #seoulmuseum #seoultravel #koreatravel #thingstodoinseoul