Lee Yoonseo

Yoonseo Lee

Yoonseo Lee selects subjects for her paintings from the vast information available on the internet. Her paintings reveal more about the failures rather than the successes of image representation. The smudged images within her quick brushstrokes expose the current predicament of the medium of painting, which struggles to keep up with the quantity and speed of the deluge of information. Born in Seoul in 1983, Yoonseo Lee graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Korea National University of Arts in 2006, and completed her Master's degree in the same field at the same institution in 2017.

Major Works

Image Defragment series (2020~)

Yoonseo Lee's work begins by collecting images from search engines, portal sites, and SNS. She looks at these images, which seem important, and quickly sketches impressions and memorable shapes onto the canvas, just like a sketch. As she continues with other images, images overlay upon each other, and brushstrokes and paints overlap. As the images intermingle and overlap, the original image disappears, and parts of the image remain glitch-like, mixed together.

Awards and Selections

Yoonseo Lee has been selected for RE: SEARCH (Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul, 2022), Artist Incubating Program (Open Space Bae, Busan, 2017), and Daum Kakao Story Funding Project (Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, 2016).

Exhibitions

Yoonseo Lee has held solo exhibitions such as "and other Things" (Hotel Skypark Kingstown Gallery, Seoul, 2023), "2109" (Artist Run Space, Seoul, 2019), "Vast and Shallow" (Gallery 175, Seoul, 2016), and "Bigfoot Reference" (Gana Art Space, Seoul, 2015).

Her major group exhibitions include "Knuckleball" (Gallery Chosun, Seoul, 2023), "Follow, Flow, Feed. The Feed I Live In" (Arko Art Center, Seoul, 2020), "Failure Exhibition; Prequel" (Plan B Project Space, Seoul, 2020), "Your Search, On-demand Research Service" (Doosan Art Center, Seoul, 2019), "Lobby Muddy Carpet" (2/W, Seoul, 2018), "2017 Artist incubating program, Invincibles" (Open Space Bae, Busan, 2017), "Ignition Point" (Insa Art Space, Seoul, 2017), " Korea National University of Arts, School of Visual Arts, 20th Anniversary Exhibition" (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2016), "55" (Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul, 2015), "Art Wall Space" (Gana Art Space, Seoul, 2015), and more.