ESK / LEESUKYUNG - WARDROBE
ESK / Lee Sukyung
ESK enjoys observing the fashion of individuals and groups in urban environments. She draws inspiration from their colors, textures, silhouettes, movements across time and space, and from the tension between identities shaped by the gaze of others and the realities of everyday life. The distinctive individuality that emerges from this tension informs her work across drawing, sculpture and tattoo art.
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Pleasantly distinctive figures dressed in expressive clothing often appear in ESK’s drawings. But “Wardrobe” is not a book about someone’s clothes or closet.
Rather, “Wardrobe” is a word that came to mind while looking through the roughly 900 drawings gathered here, works made across different periods and contexts. As the pages are turned, different moments in time seem to overlap unexpectedly.
As a child, I would wander around my parents while they were getting ready to go out and catch sight of my mother's wardrobe standing open. Inside were coats, shirts, scarves, and other garments. I was fascinated by their different materials, colors, and patterns. It felt like an unknown territory, a place whose contents could never be fully understood from the outside.
Sometimes, when the house was empty and I was alone, I would open my parents' wardrobe and try on a few of their clothes.
Later, I grew up and had wardrobes of my own. As my living situations changed, so did the wardrobes themselves. Their size, material, and form continued to change along with me.
——excerpt from a conversation with ESK
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Book “Wardrobe” brings together around 900 drawings that ESK has created from 2006 to now.
It includes doodles, illustrations, drawings, paintings, sketches for sculptures and installations, and preliminary studies. Images created in different situations and for different purposes fill the book from beginning to end.
Just as someone opens a closet and chooses what to wear, “Wardrobe” encourages readers to discover their own connections among the images within.
For people who love drawing, and for those who draw themselves, it is a book that can remain close at hand and be revisited over time.
22x29.5x6cm
992 pages
published by Happy Salami
21 Nov 2025
* This item is only available for ship shipping (around 30 business days)
