Gunhee Kim

painting #1, 2024, oil on paper, 91 x 121 cm

LEE EUGEAN GALLERY is pleased to present Gunhee Kim(b. 1969)’s solo exhibition from May 23 to June 22, 2024. Titled “그렇다. 그리고 그렇지 않다.”, it speaks about the boundary of ‘boundaries,’ which lies between conviction and the negation and doubt of that conviction. This painting project visualizes and contemplates the artist’s changed perspective, where things believed and perceived as facts or truths can no longer be unequivocally stated as ‘yes’. In this first solo exhibition at LEE EUGEAN GALLERY, the artist will present about 20 paintings on canvas and paper.

painting #2, 2024, oil on paper, 87.3 x 107 cm

The new works in this exhibition are intended to leave room for emotions without categorizing or concluding the constantly changing aspects of the artist’s life. Rather than paintings to understand, they are paintings to feel, focusing on the language of painting to express sensations. The artist portrays feelings of alienation, emptiness, and loss encountered as personal identities, beliefs, and hopes, once confidently defined, are redefined one by one, using colors and ambiguous screens abstractly. Unlike her works between 2010 and 2016, which primarily used black-and-white tones, the new works feature various colors, and the artist has strived to minimize restrictions on painting forms, expressions, and materials.

여러분, 2024, charcoal and acrylic on canvas, 24,2 x 33.4 cm

“Oil on paper painting” begin with the artist’s intention to remember familiar yet unfamiliar stories and approach them as individual narratives. It’s akin to the naive expectation that there might be another story beyond the scene when zooming in with a phone camera, but the zoomed-in scene becomes more ambiguous instead. It’s like facing a wall up close, losing focus and seeing nothing but the trajectory of empty time filled with colors, shapes, and spaces, reflecting her choice.  The artist wanted to be free even from the pressure of empty canvases, pouring out her thoughts and wishes sometimes lightly but joyfully and sometimes passionately on the light paper that mainly uses for sketches, creating free and beautiful images with unique density.

painting #11, 2024, oil on paper, 110.5 x 78.7 cm

Gunhee Kim, born in Seoul in 1969, graduated from Hongik University and its graduate school. After the first solo exhibition in 1994, she moved to Barcelona, Spain in 1996 and completed a doctoral program at Sant Jordi University in Barcelona for three years. From 1999 to 2012, she held five solo exhibitions in Spain and Seoul. She participated in numerous group exhibitions between 1995 and 2016, shuttling between galleries such as Gallery Seoho, Total Museum of Art, Insa Art Center, and Art Space Pool in Seoul, and collected in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Artbank.

LEE EUGEAN GALLERY
17 Apgujeong-ro 77-gil Gangnam-gu Seoul, Korea
+82-2-542-4964

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