The work of the South Korea–born artist emerged during a period of personal and cultural transformation in the 1970s. When her family moved from Seoul to New York in 1972, Lee encountered an artistic environment shaped by Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, and the beginnings of Video Art — a setting that encouraged experimental thinking and the expansion of traditional visual languages. Her early interest in non-figurative abstraction and in how it «communicates and is understood»[3] led her, after studying drawing at a college in northern California in 1976–77, to Pratt Institute in New York in 1979 and briefly to Italy in 1980, where she devoted herself intensively to non-objective painting and drawing. Her works are grounded in meticulous material investigations that reveal the qualities, effects, and interactions of different painterly and graphic means. From these studies, Lee developed two fundamental techniques: drawing within oil and acrylic paintings, and painting within graphite and pastel drawings. She describes this deliberate blurring of boundaries between the two media as «drawing – and making it appear as painting»[4], through which new forms of visual vocabulary emerge. In the interplay of her finely layered geometric motifs, applied layer by layer, she has developed a pictorial language in which the intuitive and the rational merge, creating a fragile balance between emotion and structure.
In the presentation «Geometric Presence», Lee masterfully translates the concept of cosmic harmony and order into a sensual spatial experience for the viewer. In a series of twelve recently created paintings in pastel on canvas, the artist transforms the interplay of dusk and night, the reflection of the sun on water, and the distant glow of boats and houses into abstract compositions. With titles such as «Falling Ellipsoids», «Drops of Presence», and «Reverberate», Lee expresses the notion of «living presence» already suggested by the exhibition title: floating forms relate to one another, merge and separate, move alongside each other and drift apart. From the two-dimensional plane of painting, mysterious, ethereal, and spherical three-dimensional worlds emerge. This impression is further enhanced by the artist’s characteristic chalky, impasto texture, which, shifting from delicate pastel to darker tones, creates a subtle atmospheric depth. The elliptical format of the canvases amplifies the visual impact of the works, emphasizing their extraordinary balance between painterly depth, chromatic energy, and spatial resonance.
We are delighted to present «Geometric Presence», featuring works selected exclusively by the artist for Häusler Contemporary. Through this body of work, Lee presents the dichotomy between the metaphysical, non-representational concept and the material process of image-making. In a remarkable way, the artist unites immaterial ideas with the material act of creation, revealing how the invisible can take form through matter.
(Susanne Kirchner)
