Title of art	밥상-세 그릇/Meal Table: Three Bowls			Sector	Painting (회화)
Art specifications	75?75cm			Material technique	Clay and acrylic on wood
Collection year	2001			Production year	1993
Gallery	Seoul Museum of Art			Artist	Lee, Jong-gu
Description of art	The “Meal Table” series shows how Lee Jong-gu’s oeuvre has shifted from his previous works which illustrated the realities of rural society through individuals, to a more metaphorical expression with individuals replaced by objects. By using actual objects as background material and adding intricate hyperrealist techniques to convey realism, his objective was to highlight Korea’s family meal culture of sharing their lives over warm rice and other dishes. As seen in “Meal Table: Sowing” (1993) and “Meal Table: Three Bowls” (1993), rice seeds carefully drawn with acrylic paint, shards of a broken plate, and spoons are set on top of an actual wooden table used for meals with mud spread across the surface. For farmers, the meal table symbolizes family and the fruits of an entire year’s worth of labor, and the mud spread across the table’s surface represents the farmers’ unshakeable faith in the earth. Yet the broken shards of bowls inscribed with the Chinese characters “壽 (longevity)” and “福 (fortune),” and the strewn seeds that have yet to spread roots, imply an unsustainable reality where neither is present. Even so, the neatly placed spoons convey Lee Jong-gu’s conviction that the family unit must be preserved even in the face of difficult realities.
Address	61, Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul			Source	Seoul Metropolitan Government