Jihyun Lee

Jihyun Lee has been focusing on painting with rigorous rearrangement of surrealistic spaces. Over two decades, she has predominantly explored paintings and drawings with the aim to maximize the certain state of in-between reverie and reality. Her work has continuously existed within the ambivalent threshold where one is weaving in and out of her never-ending daydreams and real experiences in life. When viewing her paintings, one’s eyes cannot remain still but inevitably need to zoom in and out and focus on the multitude of ideas and thoughts that enter her mind so naturally. Similarly, her drawings, perhaps on a more personal level, show the constant desire to drench herself with the never-ending reveries and its counterpart, reality. If we can imagine that memories are compiled vertically within a linear timeline, she, with her masterful hand and necessary tools, slices open the stratified multiple rows of memories vertically, so the space filled with many different and unrelated images in her mind becomes accessible and tangible. She paints several disparate scenes on a single surface and creates previously non-existent depth that now consisted of many layers. The artist allows the audience to walk into the unknown depth inserting their own memories between the layers to understand her work and generate their own stories. Recently, drawings are about capturing the sculptural objects she is experimenting on. They become an experimental bridge that links all her thoughts most effectively while employing simultaneity of medium. The mirror text in the work is a visual echo of her thoughts being reflected in the next world beyond the threshold. Drawing has been a tremendously important medium in documenting the artist’s thoughts. Through the frenzy action on the paper, a drawing can contain what she wants to record more vividly.