Häusler Contemporary is pleased to present in this viewing room – parallel to the exhibition «Geometric Presence» in the Collector's Room in Zurich – the latest works of the artist Kyung-Lim Lee (*1957 Seoul, KR, lives and works in Arizona, US). Lee’s artistic practice is based on a reduced, abstract visual language that draws on traditions of Minimal Art and Concrete Art.

Kyung-Lim Lee's 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. In the interplay of technique and geometric imagery, a new visual vocabulary emerges that encompasses key aspects such as form, relation, and spatial tension. For viewers, the geometric elements do not appear static; rather, they develop their own dynamism – a process to which the exhibition title also refers.

Our presentation represents another contribution to the European reception of Kyung-Lim Lee’s work, which began in 2015 with her first solo exhibition at Häusler Contemporary in Munich. Born in Seoul in 1957 and living in the United States since 1972, Kyung-Lim Lee studied in California, Italy, and New York. Her works have been shown in various museums in the United States. The solo exhibition at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, in 2012 was the first comprehensive presentation of her work in a museum context, while the exhibition «Transposition» at the Diocesan Museum in Freising in 2021 was the artist’s first major exhibition in a European museum. In the same year, Häusler Contemporary dedicated the solo exhibition «Transposition II» to Lee in Zurich.

Further solo presentations have been shown in New York, Seoul, Houston, and Beijing. Lee has received various art awards. Her works are held in private and institutional collections in America, Europe, and Asia.

«I like to imagine the geometric forms as being alive, breathing and seeing. They can reveal a beginning, a middle and end of cycles.»[1]  KYUNG-LIM LEE

This statement by the artist, first published in the catalogue for the exhibition «Echo of Geometry» (2015) at Häusler Contemporary in Munich, illustrates Lee’s long-standing and profound engagement with the dynamic and cyclical qualities of geometric forms. This artistic interest is also reflected in the newest paintings shown in our presentation «Geometric Presence» (2025) in the Collector's Room in Zurich. In twelve paintings created between 2024 and 2025, abstract and geometric elements become metaphors of vitality: floating forms enter into relationships with one another, merge, move alongside one another, and separate from one another. In this way, mysterious, otherworldly, and spherical three-dimensional worlds emerge from two-dimensional painting.

[1] Cited in Kyung-Lim Lee, in: «Kyung-Lim Lee. Echo of Geometry», catalogue on the occasion of the exhibition «Kyung-Lim Lee. Echo of Geometry», Häusler Contemporary Munich, 3 November 2015 – 15 January 2016, p. 2

In the presentation «Geometric Presence», Kyung-Lim Lee impressively translates the concept of harmony and order in the cosmos into a sensuous spatial experience for viewers. In the elliptical paintings, the artist transforms the interplay of dusk and night, the reflection of the sun on water, and the distant lights of boats and houses into abstract pictorial works.

In addition to the blurring of boundaries between canvas as image support (painting) and pastel as pictorial medium (drawing), color design plays a central role in the artist’s new works: the characteristic chalky, impasto-like texture of the pieces, ranging from delicate pastel to dark tones, creates a subtle, atmospheric depth.

«Drawing – making it look like painting» Lee said, succinctly summing up her process in producing the stunning drawings [...] with luminous surfaces defying easy identification, having fluid, transparent layers, glowing with color, populated with boldly modelled animated forms.

Drawing was a prominent element in abstract painting done by Lee in her paintings of the 1980s and 1990s, mostly oils and oil and acrylic combinations presenting circles, ellipses, and rectangles. “I don’t make any distinctions” Lee said, “I chose the material based on the specific effect I wanted to see on the surface and sometimes it called for different material – dry/wet material at different stages.” Lee referred to the forms she was making in these paintings as “universally known.” Drawing and drawing materials including graphite and ink were applied by her to modulate otherwise familiar shapes in the paintings, adding nuances to edges and surfaces not available from painting alone. I can recall seeing these canvases in the early 1990s and coming away impressed by the forms which in a 1995 text about the paintings I called “individualistic configurations” and cited as examples her “notched rectangles” and ellipses with “boldly marked contours.” I was also intrigued by how seamless in her paintings the merging of drawing and painting was. In the same text I wrote about her intentions in modifying universal shapes as she had done and based on interviews with the artist and my own perceptions said they were about creating a “personal vocabulary” for conveying the theme of interest to her during the 1990s which she termed “the idea of state.”».[1]


[1] Transposition: The art of Kyung-Lim Lee by Ronny Cohen, Ph.D., in: Kyung-Lim Lee Transposition, Diözesanmuseum Freising (Ed.), p. 26.

Please find more information on Kyung-Lim Lee here.