Dogs have long been heralded as “man’s best friend.” It’s a sentiment Korean sculptor Seounghee Lee honors in her intricate, totem-like work. One such piece, True Love (The Key) (2025), is a large-scale silver-leafed resin sculpture of a key featuring the face of a dog-like angel. Engraved with the words “True Love,” this sculpture emphasizes the bond between humans and dogs, the dominating theme for Lee’s exhibition “Pieces of” at sangheeut.
The title suggests the incomplete nature of the exhibition’s narrative of human and dog interactions. To help tell the story, Lee mythologizes the origin story of dog and man. In particular, her “Doggie Coin” series illustrates an imagined first interaction between dogs and humans on a series of circular bronze sculptures. On several of these “coins,” including Doggie Coin 2 (The Beginning of the World) (2025), she depicts a human hand reaching out to a star-eyed dog in a scene evoking Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (ca. 1512).
Born in 1994, Lee has showcased her work at various galleries across South Korea, including The Weekend Room in Seoul, Goyang Aram Nuri Arts Center in Goyang, and Mullae Art Space in Seoul. Lee graduated with an MFA from Seoul’s Hongik University in 2021 and currently lives and works in Ilsan, South Korea.