ARTIST STATEMENT

I was born in 1984 in Seoul, South Korea. I completed my first degree in South Korea in 2009 and then decided to study abroad in Germany to broaden my perspectives. The long history of European art is very fascinating to me. I also wanted to experience the strength of contemporary German art directly on site. In addition, I hoped to gain a new perspective on my previous ways of thinking through different experiences in Germany. That's how I arrived in Germany in 2010.

For a long time, I have been exploring the possibilities of visualising spatiality with different materials, questioning the relationship between inside and outside. During my studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, I often took wickerwork as my starting material, for example in the form of wicker baskets. I am particularly interested in the diverse structures and different haptics.

Lately, I have been using my works to make the desired pictorial effects of woodcarving visible. In search of a painterly representation, I continue to visualise the theme of inside and outside, which I have been dealing with for a long time. Visual essays emerge that create new atmospheres between sculpture and painting. All manipulations of the painting are done manually and successively. My aim is to have a painterly impact with a fine and poetic style on the new works made of solid wooden panels.

MARCO ALBER, SALVE MAGAZINE, KÖLN, 2018

Combining classicism and modernity in a single-colour work that gains its expression mainly through the repetition of stamped structures is not an easy task. Lee succeeds in this symbiotic combination of opposites. It may be because of her being a Korean woman, who leaves behind her life in Asia to promote her artistic abilities, first to deepen her art studies in Bremen and then in Düsseldorf.

In the end, the onlooker does not care to know out of what this game of opposites, of symmetry and irregularity, of countless repetitions and interruptions of the same arises, for the final works speak for themselves. Often, the artist skilfully combines the advantages of sculptural ways of working with those of hanging wall objects. These are created from clay, resin or natural materials, which she puts together in clear form and arrangement. Lee is not only concerned with the resulting product, but also with the free spaces that arise in her works and are either further processed or already have their informative value as empty gaps.

Lee's work speaks of the experience of repetition of work steps, of the uniform arrangement of materials, recesses and lines that get their lives from the human hand and its irregularity. Thus, Lee’s works tell of a world that, despite the attempt to press its components into norms, is always determined by unforeseen and uncontrollable factors and so only develops its true face. This face is definitely worth a closer look.