Lee Gihun: Prometheus and Pietà

Disaster has struck. Floods. Tidal waves. Boys in school shorts and animal-headed masks too big for their bodies march through crashing waves against crimson skies. They carry torches. They’re here to rescue the dying and the soon-to-be extinct.

If that sounds like the opening sequence of an anime you've already seen, you're not wrong. It's Nausicaä meets Evangelion. Kids inheriting a world adults wrecked, suiting up in masks and armor because no one else is coming to help.

Some of these paintings are eight feet tall. Pastels and acrylics, brushstrokes visible. Colors cranked to nuclear. They’re installed against electric rainbow and black walls that lend a let's-put-on-a-show intensity. The whole gallery becomes the world.

The title references the Pietà and Prometheus, the grieving mother and the man who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. These children carry fire through the ruins, but it's no longer a gift. It's all that's left.

The apocalypse has never been more shareable.

Lee Gihun (b. Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province, South Korea, 1980) still lives in the mountainous lake region of his birthplace, where two national parks live alongside a giant cement factory. A children's book illustrator, he broke out by making "live paintings," videos of himself painting to music that sounds like it’s a K-Drama score. Kathy Grayson, the Hole Gallery’s founder, saw one on Instagram and brought him to New York.