Abstraction is courted, yet ultimately tempered in the work of Keun Woo Lee. Traces of figuration persist; plants, flowers, and other elemental features of landscape remain visible in Lee’s creations. These forms, however, serve as a mere framework for the “nothingness” that holds the artist’s true interest. Lee has developed a keen sensitivity for the exploration of absence’s impact on depth, successfully immersing the viewer’s attention in the concave reductions of the final image.
Read MoreA classically trained landscape painter, Lee has worked with a variety of media. Her latest body of work is characterized by painted porcelain from Jingdezhen, China, known for nearly two millennia as the “porcelain capital”. The artist’s creative process is an arduous one— Lee paints, then fires, large porcelain sheets within a single kiln in order to achieve the desired aesthetic.
Working quickly and intuitively, and believing corrections to be taboo, the artist’s process ensures that each brushstroke and implementation of color acts as a gestural invocation of emotion.
Keun Woo Lee was born in Korea and currently lives and works in Kiel, Germany.
