Heejoon Lee's abstract artworks combine painting and photography, involving a process whereby he takes images from his life, edits them, and incorporates them into paintings that are distinctly geometric in style.
Read MoreHeejoon Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1988. He received a BFA in Painting and Sculpture from Hongik University in 2012 and earned an MFA in Fine Arts at the Glasgow School of Art in 2014.
Grounded in observation, Heejoon Lee's process begins by taking photographs with his mobile phone, recording the daily scenes, moments, and spaces he encounters while travelling or walking.
Returning to his studio or home, he then selects the image that best captures his visceral experience. Lee enlarges and edits the image before printing it onto paper to be mounted directly onto the canvas.
The artist then applies paint, often in thick, almost impasto strokes, using bands of colour, geometrical shapes, and a diverse vocabulary of dots, lines, planes, and curves to build meaning and depth.
Lee likens himself to a 'builder'. He has compared his process of laying paint on the canvas with a custom squeegee to applying mortar to a brick wall.
Interested in architecture, its changing form, and ongoing impact on our lives, Lee cautiously examines the proportions, balance, and colours of his surrounding environments, hoping to capture this in his paintings.
'A Shape of Taste' is among the artist's most representative ongoing series. Lee began these works in 2018, after he returned to Seoul after studying in the United Kingdom.
Upon his return, Lee found that once-familiar streets, shops, and restaurants were now closed or altered significantly. This transformation of the cityscape inspired him to take a new perspective when viewing the colours and shapes of his hometown, prompting him to turn to photography, drawing, and abstraction to interpret it.
'A Shape of Taste' translates the ever-evolving experience of the street, noting small changes such as new rooftops, painted walls, and altered stairwells, and ultimately evoking an architectural metamorphosis.
These works were shown at Kukje Gallery, Seoul, in 2022 for the artist's first exhibition with the gallery. Comprising 20 new works, the exhibition included works from the Image Architect series (2021–ongoing), alongside sculptures derived from his paintings.
Another major pillar of Lee's art, the 'Image Architect' series emerged from the photo-collage works that were first introduced in his solo exhibition The Tourist at L'espace 71, Seoul, in 2020.
Heejoon Lee goes beyond his previous vocabulary of translating everyday scenes into abstract paintings. Instead, he brings the captured space to the forefront of the canvas.
Looking back to an interest in architecture and the built environment first developed as an undergraduate, the artist specifies his memories through photo-collage rather than abstracting them with colour planes and geometric forms.
Lee uses a range of saturated hues, shapes, and lines to develop his acrylic and photo-collage paintings. With this technique of painting on photographs, he engages directly with the architectural space and brings it into conversation with opaque colour fields and geometric shapes, as if emerging from image, while directing the audience's attention to what remains.
The thick acrylic paint layered on black-and-white photographs recalls the sense of space and time inherent to the process. It records Lee's memory through multitudes of layers that both reveal and conceal the image.
Over time, Lee's practice has moved beyond visualising his experience as an abstract painting. 'Image Architect' reflects a shift toward creating a spatial experience in which the architecture and painting coexist on the canvas, proactively seeking the architectural potential of painting.
Since 2019, Lee has created three-dimensional works alongside his painted, mixed-media works. The 2019 series 'Sculpture upon Sculpture', for example, was created by dismantling, disassembling, and reconstructing his colour-field paintings.
The artist has participated in residencies at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2022), Incheon Art Platform (2021), and Neoterismoi Toumazou, Nicosia, Cyprus (2013). In 2019, he received First Prize in the 'New Hero' award, hosted by the monthly art magazine Public Art.
In spring 2023, Heejoon Lee was announced as one of 13 artists chosen for the Korean Artists Abroad programme supported by Korea Arts Management Service. The same year, the artist was nominated as a finalist for the 22nd SONGEUN Art Award.
Heejoon Lee's works are held in public collections at the Seoul Museum of Art and MMCA Art Bank at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea.
Heejoon Lee has been the subject of both solo exhibitions and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include Heejoon Lee, Kukje Gallery, Seoul (2022); Raw, Polished, Coated, Space So, Seoul (2021); Image Architect, Incheon Art Platform Gallery, Incheon (2021); The Tourist, L'espace 71, Seoul (2020); Emerald Skin, Yeemock Gallery, Seoul (2017); and The Speakers, Weekend, Seoul (2017).
Group exhibitions include Dwindles to a Point and Vanishes, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2021); Unstable Objects, Seoul Museum of Art (2019); Geometry, Beyond Simplicity, Museum SAN, Wonju (2019); Phantom City, Sehwa Museum of Art, Seoul (2019); Flaneur, Artspace Hue, Paju (2019); and DROGUM, Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland (2017).
Heejoon Lee's website can be found here and his Instagram here.
Articles on Heejoon Lee have been published in various publications, including The Korea Herald, The Korea Economic Daily, and The Galleria.
Rachel Kubrick | Ocula | 2023
