Artist: Doowon Lee

ACA Galleries presents Doowon arrives in New York with Too Many Animals. The exhibition marks Lee’s second solo presentation at ACA Galleries and introduces New York to a new body of work that is unabashedly exuberant, materially rich, and teeming with life.

Doowon Lee is a self-taught South Korean artist whose practice is inseparable from movement, drawing inspiration from nature and using local materials discovered during his journeys. Working as an itinerant, he has established temporary studios across Pakistan, Nepal, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and beyond.

In Lee's magical universe nature, animals, and humans are created equally occupying the same moral footing. He creates a humorous world free from traditional forms and distinctions by seamlessly blending artificial and natural elements. His work incorporates natural fibers such as wool from Pakistan, hemp fabric from Nepal, and khadi cotton from India, combined with various locally sourced materials and Korean ink. There is intentionally no quiet negative space in Lee’s paintings. The compositions are dense, noisy, and intentionally unruly as a deliberate rejection of the cool restraint that governs much of the contemporary art world.

The title of this exhibition isn’t a metaphor. It’s a literal description of what I brought to New York. The paintings are densely packed with tigers, leopards, frogs, birds, and fish. There is no quiet negative space. The surfaces are crowded, noisy, and slightly out of control.

A lot of contemporary art tries very hard to appear serious and difficult to decode. I prefer a more direct approach. In my previous exhibition, I arrived riding a golden submarine. This time, I arrive with a massive herd of animals. Biologically speaking, I am simply another animal migrating into this gallery ecosystem. My work doesn’t hide behind complex metaphors. It’s just heavy tents, rough wool, and too many animals. Really, too many. – Doowon Lee

That candor is itself a kind of artistic statement. Where many artists labor to mystify, Lee insists on directness, a philosophy that extends from his materials to his migrations to the sheer unleashing of an unstoppable herd of creatures crowding his canvases. To encounter his work is to step into a visual ecosystem governed by instinct and abundance.

Lee has garnered significant critical and institutional recognition in recent years. In 2023, a solo exhibition was presented at the Saatchi Gallery in London and in 2024 Lee was selected as a representative artist for the Busan Biennale. In 2025 he was artist in residence at The Twenty Two, London and had his debut exhibition at ACA Galleries in New York. He continues to actively exhibit domestically and internationally and has been the recipient of several glowing reviews in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Vogue magazine among others.