Exhibition Information

2025 194×70cm

Moonlight 22×16cm

2025 80×130cm

2025 91×116.8cm

			
Whose moonlight are we standing under now?
 
Myungjin Lee has been creating paintings that camouflage individual figures within repetitive patterns. Lives that appear similar fill the canvas, but beneath them lie distinct existences. Like a hidden picture puzzle, her characters are only revealed upon close inspection. Rather than directly intervening in such scenes, Lee maintains the stance of an observer and messenger, quietly raising the traces and emotional expressions layered within the social structure. In doing so, she slowly reveals the personal narratives embedded behind the image.
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Her exhibition Moonlight reflects the lives of others with a gaze that is gentler and quieter than before. Stepping beyond the position of a passive observer, Lee assumes the role of a weaver, intertwining different times and characters within a single canvas. She weaves threads of memory, lines of emotion, and anonymous stories, layering them into a dense visual fabric. The exhibition title, Moonlight, reflects this shift in attitude. Inspired by the Worin cheongangjigok, a Buddhist hymn written by King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty, Lee borrows the metaphor of moonlight—"the moon's reflected in a thousand rivers"—to capture the emotional textures that gently permeate between others and herself.
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The exhibition unfolds through two main bodies of work. One series translates the emotions embedded in anonymous stories into painting, while the other draws from commemorative photographs taken at real locations. Although they begin from different sources, both construct a narrative by piecing together scattered fragments of memory.
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The first series originates from confessions posted on the social media platform Threads. Lee collects fragments of anonymous memories and uses them as material for painting, creating lingering images where blurred forms and other people's stories are entangled. Just as we quietly wish upon the moon or leave unspoken stories in digital spaces shared by many, these platforms become places where memories and confessions gently accumulate—as if imagining that someone unknown might have looked up at the same moon.
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The other body of work is based on commemorative photographs taken at specific locations. The Moonlight–Waterfalls (2025) series, for instance, draws from images taken at Jeongbang Falls. Most of the paintings render individual figures and moments drawn from separate photographs, revealing the layered temporality embedded in a single place. One painting in the series superimposes multiple photographs, showing how repeated acts of commemoration converge into a collective stratum of memory. These scenes, formed through the overlapping of time, leave behind marks that resemble weathered traces—subtly holding layers of time and emotion. Like moonlight that spreads softly, these images seep quietly yet unmistakably into the canvas.
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Lee's paintings are not immediately graspable. To encounter the figures and stories carefully hidden within her repeated structures and textured surfaces, one must give time. The viewer steps slowly into the image—not just to enter it, but to witness what is being woven within. The faces of strangers, and perhaps one’s own memories, drift and overlap on the canvas. Life's moments are woven together like threads of different colors. Like familiar landmarks where many have posed for photographs, we may all share similar gestures, yet each of those moments becomes a singular memory.
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Moonlight brings such ‘similar but not the same’ times back into view beneath its glow. Fragmented emotions and anonymous narratives from digital platforms are reassembled in Lee’s pictorial language. The boundaries between self and other, between public space and private memory, begin to blur. Through the act of recording life, the artist retrieves individual moments that quietly shine—and gently asks the viewer,
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Whose moonlight are we standing under now?

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Chang Minhyun | Art Center White Block Curator
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