Past Exhibition

Korean

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lee Hyun Joung

(b.1972 Korea)

A graduate in visual arts from Sejong University in South Korea, Lee Hyun Joung develops a series of ink landscapes based on memories of her native country, which she mixes with dream projections of vast, unreal places. The single horizon line is replaced by a multitude of parallel and sinuous lines, which split and accumulate like geological strata or sediment ripples, giving a reading grid to these aerial views without scale or proportion.

Tending towards abstraction, detail is evacuated in favour of the sensation of infinity and the uncertain nature of the element represented : a wave could just as easily be a mountain. Between each uninterrupted line, the blank space left vacant on the paper is not an inactive blank space. It corresponds to the idea, widely held in Taoist thought of emptiness and fullness, that the interval is what makes the connection between visible objects. And it is precisely after a period of silence, points out Lee Hyun Joung, that a line emerges : something happens against a background of nothing.

The lines, created to the rhythm of her body, are superimposed like musical staves or the ripples of the foreshore left by the low tide : they swell and recede like a breath. Lee Hyun Joung likens these forms to a path of life, an initiatory walk that is less a matter of a delimited stage than of a cyclical time, the one the Greeks called aiôn. Like the nature (desert, land, sea) to which it refers, each line drawn in ink tends to be generic, i.e.

Abstracted from the artist's personal journey to have a more universal scope. Almost exclusively blue or black, the ink is also writing, which Lee Hyun Joung deploys on hanji sheets, popular Korean papers made from mulberry pulp. In Korea, hanji paper is traditionally used for calligraphy, wallpapering the walls and windows of the house, and making objects. Mulberry leaves are immersed in water, kneaded, dried, cut and the scraps are reintegrated to shape other leaves of which the artist preserves the irregularity and thickness of the fibres. The resulting support is a material-palimpsest, like shreds of memory accumulated to form a blanket. She reports that as a child, she was already inventing landscapes from the damp stains on the hanji paper that covered the floor of her house.
EDUCATION
1994 Sejong University, Department of visual art
1996 Formation d¡¯orfèvre, Paris
1998 Ecole B.J.O (Bijouterie, Joaillerie, Horlogerie), Paris, France
Ecole AFEDAP (Bijouterie, Joaillerie, Horlogerie), Paris, France
C.A.P (Certificat Aptitude Professionel), Paris, France
EXHIBITION
2024Silence : Lee Hyun Joung Solo Exhibition, The Columns Gallery, Singapore
ART SG, The Columns Gallery, Singapore
2023Infinity Path: Lee Hyunjoung Solo Exhibition, The Columns Gallery Seoul
Kiaf SEOUL 2023, The Columns Gallery, Seoul
Tokyo Gendai, The Columns Gallery, Yokohama, Japan
Lee Hyunjoung, Louis&Sack, Paris
Art Busan 2023, The Columns Gallery, Busan
Korea Galleries Art Fair, The Columns Gallery, Seoul
2022Asia now Salon international, Paris, France
Solid¡¯art Carreau du Temple, Paris, France
Landscapes IKFF Gallery, Belgium
2021IDA Medicis Art Galerie, Paris, France
Galerie ArtsKoco, Luxembourg
Biennale européenne Blanc manteaux Paris, France
Mediatheque Hélene Berr Paris 12eme, France
2020Summer Exhibition, Royal academy of London
IDA Medicis Art Galerie, Paris, France
2019Salon D¡¯automne£¬Paris, France
Feasts on Paper Art biennale, Shanghai, China
Beyond Borders Art Exhibition, with association « Les enfants de Mekong », Hongkong
IDA Medicis Art Galerie, Paris, France
2018Foundation Taylor, Paris 9eme, France
Galerie ArtsKoco, Luxembourg
Galerie Plexus, Montreux, Swiss
2017Galerie Montparnasse Ville de Paris, Paris, France
Shanghai Art Fair, Shanghai, China
Canton Art Fair, Guangzhou, China
Art Capital - Grand palais Paris, Taylor Prize
2013Reflection, exhibition with France Eclat, Palais de Tokyo
2012Gallery B, Paris, France
2011Gallery 89, Paris, France
2009Gallery 5 etoiles, Paris, France
2005Rétrospective, Paris, France
2004Migration de l'âme, Paris, France
2002Objet et ses souvenirs, Esprit Buissonnier, Paris, France
2000Voyage de Tahiti, Maison de Tahiti, Paris, France