Working with techniques rooted in traditional Korean painting, LEE Eunsil (b. 1983) visually articulates situations that that arise at the point where personal desire collides with social norms. Her practice attends to instinctual drives and impulses that are suppressed or obscured within contemporary society, translating the psychological conflicts that emerge from them into a metaphorical language of painting. Whereas her early compositions depicted the psychological conflicts of individuals resisting traditional customs and social norms by projecting them onto the architectural framework of the hanok and the figures of anonymous animals, the recent paintings after the 2020s gradually strips away external factors to focus on subject’s psychological statue and emotional currents, translated into abstract scenes. LEE summons onto the pictorial plane emotions that are intrinsic to contemporary human existence yet remain tacitly taboo within social structures, along with narratives long excluded from dominant discourse. By foregrounding stories buried in the intimate strata of personal memory, her paintings attempt to resonate with a more universal realm.
24 April 2026
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