Hypercactaceous

In both female and male Homo sapiens, the term areole describes the small, pigmented, and delicately, erogenously sensitive patch from the center of which projects the tender nipple. Cacti, from the plant family Cactaceae, feature latent buds that may grow hair-like prickles, fluff, or fully formed spines that both serve as grim deterrents and eloquently express the shy, loner personalities of these xerophytes, or drought-loving plants. Cactaceous areoles, however, also occasionally sprout magnificent flowers, which bloom at night and exist for only a very short time. One is inclined to wonder where the Korean artist Lee Kwang-Ho could have seen the cacti he paints in such a hyperrealistic manner, with their bristles, excrescences, mucilage, and wilted flowers still in place, just so. One may assume he saw them on a computer screen, where digital photographs can be enlarged in a way that mimics the age-old function of a camera obscura. Such aggrandizement reverberates in Lee’s oversized canvases, where individual specimens of plant species, perhaps domesticated on urban balconies and in suburban gardens, are starkly transformed into monumental sentinels that, with their bizarrely colorful livery, stand watch over the thresholds of imaginary deserts.