Zoom into Lee Ungno's Collage 'Composition (1970)'

Lee Ungno started collage with the intention of developing a European application for hanji, which was his most familiar medium. He then included other mediums such as newspapers and cotton wool, all of which can easily be found in daily life: he tore up such materials, reassembled the fragments, divided them by colour or painted them, and glued them onto his canvas.

For this work, Ungno pasted cotton wool on hanji and painted it to suggest a new meaning and medium application to the European concept of collage.

In contrast to Western collage's intended stylistic divisions within the canvas...

...he intended to let the medium evenly cover his canvas to create an aesthetically harmonious unity, by employing elements that were alien to the conventional art medium or composition.