Soo Kyoung LEE

The artist Soo Kyoung Lee was born in 1969 in Seoul
She lives and works in Paris, Brussels and Seoul
She has been exhibiting at the Oniris gallery since 2018

Soo Kyoung Lee creates abstract and colourful forms on monochrome backgrounds without any preparatory drawings. It is the action of the brush, it is the spontaneous gesture and the colours that are shown to the spectator. All of Soo Kyoung Lee's work is the result of a perpetual exchange between the body and the canvas.

Abstraction for me is the universal place, devoid of image, representation and without the slightest interpretation.

The shapes that Soo Kyoung Lee makes appear are not thought out beforehand. They emerge as the work progresses, structured within the canvas, by a multitude of layers and underlayers of acrylic of different colours that the artist deposits at the whim of her gaze. The artist explains that "thinking and acting are simultaneous" throughout the creative process. Each gesture participates in the emergence of these characteristic imprints; each of his gestures is a new discovery and a new inspiration for the artist.

The colours added one on top of the other, one next to the other, confront and harmonize with the brushstrokes and the clusters of colours become light, fluid, vibrant and even organic forms. Thus, a finished painting is the result of a series of inspired and improvised gestures. This spontaneous and abstract approach to painting reflects the artist's desire to bring out the reality of painting through autonomous forms, existing for themselves. The material "painting" then comes to life in masses that are at once dense and light, impalpable and deep, and that occupy all or part of the canvas.

The plain and often monochrome background allows the eye to settle on the form and observe it in its smallest details. However, the background is of great importance in the composition, since it is the background that gives the painting depth. The colours that Soo Kyoung Lee chooses carry the forms and give them an environment, comparable to a cocoon. The background is thus a surface ready to see the masses of colours that the artist will entrust to him forever.