[비즈한국] Lee Jung-hyung, CEO of Ourlab, began his career in exhibition design and spatial creation after being captivated by the field. He views labor as a language of creation while constantly contemplating how to realize a stable working environment and fair compensation. On the 28th, CEO Lee took the stage as the fifth speaker at ‘BrandBiz Conference 2025’ to share his work philosophy and concerns.
Ourlab is a creative group consisting of designers and artists from various fields, including sculpture, installation, floral design, and visual/spatial design. They plan and design exhibition layouts for museums and galleries, as well as various art marketing projects.
Having majored in contemporary art, CEO Lee has always been excited about visiting museums. He was fascinated by their unique environmental charms, such as the emotions, atmosphere, and intensity of lighting. Naturally, he developed a dream of working in exhibitions. In fact, CEO Lee was a notable fine artist, but he shifted his focus from being an individual artist to running a studio. "We do everything related to exhibitions," Lee explained. "The format of the exhibition itself has come to be used in diverse ways."
CEO Lee applies contemporary art to his exhibition work. He identifies three characteristics of good work: contemporaneity, an original artistic worldview, and one's own visual language. Contemporaneity involves addressing social stories or themes that everyone can empathize with or relate to through experience. The worldview is important in how the artist concretizes the research topics they wish to pursue. Visual language is about capturing the artist's own story through media, form, and concepts.
CEO Lee remarked, "An artist is someone who constantly agonizes over what they want to say. I believe they are people who collect vast amounts of data and create their own narratives in the process of synthesizing it."
He first established standards unique to Ourlab. He wanted Ourlab to be a good collective that produces quality work. He believes that while leaving a good impression on others is important, it is also crucial to find reasons for working together—such as respecting others through beautiful collaborative relationships, fulfilling one's own role, and helping others.
There are aspects of content that can be changed and those that cannot. For example, when exhibiting a car, the car itself cannot be changed, but the surrounding atmosphere or props—the content that accompanies it—can be. Ourlab focuses on configuring the content that can be changed.
The role of space is also crucial to making content stand out. Here, space refers to the exhibition environment and conditions. "I really enjoy and focus on the role of space, and I believe it plays a critical role in creating a specific moment," CEO Lee said. "I think space leads to the expansion of work and the expansion of experience."
While working on exhibitions, CEO Lee emphasized the technique of balancing what is visible and what is not. "I usually set it at a 7 to 3 ratio," he said. "It's not a fixed ratio, but in exhibitions, it is important to decide what to show and what not to show. Just as out-of-focus effects occur when adjusting the aperture on a camera, it is vital to define what to reveal and what to conceal within a physical space."
Notable projects by Ourlab include the Samsung Electronics005930 smartphone ‘Galaxy S23’ and Hyundai Motor Company’s005380 ‘Genesis’. Before the Galaxy S23, Samsung smartphones typically featured two camera lenses, but the S23 introduced three. Ourlab proposed a marketing concept based on the idea of three lenses acting as three eyes: long-range, mid-range, and close-range. This concept was executed as a project titled ‘Explorer The New’ at the Galaxy S23 pop-up event.
For the Hyundai Genesis ‘Neolun’ exhibition, they referred to the Neolun as a ‘King’ and designed the space with the motif of someone going to have an audience with the King. For the G90 Black launch event, they introduced the concept that ‘the whole world is black’.
CEO Lee Jung-hyung stated that he wants Ourlab to be a "company with a reservoir." He hopes it becomes a company that diligently pursues the projects it wants to do, regardless of whether there is a drought or a flood.
Now 43, his current dream is to create a healthy ecosystem. "A diverse ecosystem of collaborative relationships has been formed with people who do our kind of work," Lee said. "I want this ecosystem to expand based on sustainability. I believe the process is just as important as the result."
CEO Lee pointed to the excessive ‘mythologizing’ of creative work as an unfortunate reality. He noted that while a healthy ecosystem requires appropriate compensation, the process of creating a ‘myth of the artist’ sometimes causes that compensation to vanish. "I think it is very important to receive fair treatment for the work one does," he stated. "It’s not about asking for more than what was done, but I believe things need to be reorganized to a level that is reasonably acceptable."
Ourlab’s internal motto is: ‘We do it ourselves. We talk, but we also put our bodies into it. We keep clashing.’ There is a fierce process behind Ourlab’s work, and the reason for doing it all together must be clear. This clarity is the foundation that has built the Ourlab of today.