Jihyun Lee (b.1979, Seoul; currently based in New Haven, CT) is a versatile artist known for her diverse exploration of mediums. Her work is interdisciplinary, primarily centered around oil paintings of various scales, ranging from intimate pieces to larger, immersive works. Regardless of whether her art is representational or abstract, Lee’s pieces resist simple interpretations, encouraging personal reflection as they delve into open-ended themes and indeterminacy. Using surrealist and self-referential imagery, Lee invites imaginative interpretations while candidly addressing contemporary themes related to womanhood and displacement.
She earned an M.F.A in Fine Arts, at School of Visual Arts, New York in 2018 and an M.F.A in Painting at Sungshin Women's University, Seoul in 2003. Lee has exhibited her work at institutions and galleries throughout East Asia and New York, including but not limited to Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea, Busan Museum of Modern Art, South Korea, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum, Kagawa, Japan. Solo exhibitions include Arario Gallery (Seoul and Beijing), Doosan Gallery (Seoul and New York) , and Sun Contemporary (Seoul). Selected publications include “Jihyun Lee: Reflective Surface” (2013); “Jihyun Lee: Threshold”(2008).
Jihyun Lee's artistic focus has centered on painting, involving the meticulous reconfiguration of surrealistic spaces. Over two decades, she has predominantly delved into paintings and drawings, intending to maximize the specific state between reverie and reality. Her work consistently occupies the ambiguous threshold where she interweaves her ceaseless daydreams with tangible life experiences. When observing her paintings, one's gaze cannot remain stationary; it is inevitably drawn to zoom in and out, engaging with the multitude of ideas and thoughts that naturally flow through her mind. Similarly, her drawings, perhaps on a more personal level, reveal an ongoing yearning to immerse herself in both endless reveries and the corresponding reality. Imagine that memories are arranged along a linear timeline; Jihyun Lee skillfully slices open the layered strata of memories. This grants access to the space filled with a plethora of distinct and unrelated images from her mind, making it both tangible and reachable.
On a single surface, she paints disparate scenes, creating a newfound depth composed of multiple layers. Her work invites viewers to delve into this unfamiliar depth, inserting their own memories between the layers to comprehend her art and construct their narratives. Her drawings capture the sculptural objects she experiments with, serving as experimental bridges that seamlessly connect her thoughts by utilizing the simultaneity of the medium. The mirrored text within her work serves as a visual reflection of her studies, echoing into the realm beyond the threshold. Drawing has significantly documented the artist's thoughts; through frenzied actions on paper or unprimed canvas, these relatively free-spirit gesture can vividly encapsulate what she aims to preserve.
Her most recent experimental practice involves object creation, specifically her Doll Shelf series (2018-2024). This series has evolved from a sculptural piece that includes three video channels, Re-portal (2018), later becoming intertwined with her painting series, Red Scene. In this series, objects are submerged on wooden shelves, and sometimes beneath a semi-transparent, red-tinted plexiglass cover. These objects encapsulate memories of her mother's motherhood and her son's childhood, transcending any confinement to a singular perspective of her upbringing or motherhood. In a similar vein, we do not consciously steer our dreams but rather observe them as spectators, often in a passive manner. On the shelves, she documents certain memories and generates new ones for the future, mirroring her approach in her paintings. The sculptural pieces offer limited viewing access once encased in their red-tinted nests, projecting a holographic appearance with three-dimensional facets, excluding the backside view. The objects that emerge in her large-scale paintings correspondingly share their narratives within the artworks, generating an endless cascade of future memories.