Cloud and Dark Slow Lightning are works in which Yongjae Lee
isolates and explores the clouds and lightning that appear in
earlier works, which allude to the traditional Korean painting
genre Unryongdo. In such paintings, dragons are depicted as
revealing themselves amidst clouds. In these two works, the
artist’s core methodologies of ‘appropriation’ and ‘tracing’
go beyond referencing the works of others to expand into a
process of revisiting and transforming his own.

In Cloud, the dragon is replaced by clouds, and the act of
painting them gives rise to the dragon’s form. Clouds rendered
with dynamic brushstrokes evoke its movements and
concealed lightning, acting as an indirect reminder of the
dragon’s presence.