Born in 1977 in Seoul, South Korea, and educated in Switzerland and Germany (where he studied with Thomas Bayrle at the Städelschule in Frankfurt), Lee now divides his time between Basel and Jeonju. To that end, it is perhaps not surprising that the artist synthesizes both Western and Eastern contemporary influences in his paintings: from Switzerland’s design-conscious formalism, to Germany’s omnivorous painters like Bayrle and Gerhard Richter, to Asia’s bright, stylized pop and pornographic imagery. Nevertheless, Lee’s deft and complicated paintings manage to hew to none of these influences too closely; they are inextricably, and indelibly, his own.
