Exhibition Information

			PIBI GALLERY presents the first solo exhibition of Myungmi Lee titled ‘I am a person’ from March 18th to May 8th. She is a one of the first-generation female artists in Korean contemporary art, who, through endless contemplations, has produced uplifting, energy-filled paintings over the span of forty years.

When Lee began her career as a serous artist in the 1970’s, it was a time when conceptual art was dominating the Korean art scene and when aspirations for experimental avant-garde art were running high. Rather than let herself be carried away by dominant currents, she went on to broaden her horizons based on her own distinct painting style. Her early works submitted as a promoter of the 1974 Daegu Contemporary Art Festival, considered by many to be the major pivotal point in Korean contemporary art history, were conceptual and minimal in nature, but later she began to produce colorful and bright, both figurative and abstract works that rebelled against the ascetic mood of the time. Lee experimented with new painting styles by using cloth, paper and other various mediums besides canvas, moving away from aesthetic conventions in an attempt to regard her work as a series of play as well as a place for healing and making connections.

Lee takes things of everyday life that are familiar and easily accessible as subjects of her work, such as cups, chairs, flowers, plant pots, animals, and people. Rather than attributing individual meaning to each of them, she captures the essence of their forms on surface in bold, primary colors while disregarding perspective or gravity. Shape, color, and even such factors like letters on surface are brought into the equation as things of play for the artist, the process of which add meaning. The use of light, easily-drying acrylic paint gives texture to the floating images, allowing them to colorfully and rhythmically exist on canvas, and her choice of vivid colors and unrestrained brushstrokes add weight – to what could possibly have come across as being frivolous – expressing an intuitive yet balanced composition of beauty. The end result of all of this are paintings that exude a sense of release, exploding with the perspective of the artist.

From the 1970’s, objects begin to appear in Lee’s paintings like patchworks, stiches, stickers, and collection figures. Coming into the 2000’s she borrows not only from simple words, but from lyrics of popular songs, poems, and at times even from bible verses, serving as a kind of an emotion code of sorts to knock on the hearts of audiences. For example, viewers will recall the familiar melody as soon as they understand the meaning of the written lyrics on the painting, thus creating a visual and auditory multi-sensory canvas that transforms the painting into a communication medium. Through such a process, painting, as a thing of play, acts as both a self-healing mechanism and an energy source for a happy life for the painter, while the audience experience it as a moment of conversation where they can discover hidden organic interpretations and revel in the resulting fun on their own accord.

Meanwhile, while Lee may have started producing serious art work coming through the modernism period, that did not stop her from boldly shedding past conventional painting techniques and adopting other diverse methods such as drawing lines, stamping dots, and letting paint be absorbed or freely drip down. The images, linguistic symbols, and the harmonious-coming-together of stylish colors all laid out across the canvas were in fact her free spirited improvisations heading towards the direction of post-modernism. Through the differing brush techniques – returned to being the basic element of painting – that either remain concurrently within the canvas frame or create meaning with rhythmical dynamics inside the artist-specified combination, you could say Lee’s paintings have managed to simultaneously achieve not only the primal value of paintings but also both symbolism and the room for that were excluded by abstract paintings.

Together with the artist, PIBI GALLERY has put much thought into bringing to audiences Lee’s first solo exhibition in a format that will focus on the uninhibited and open style that has been steadily present in her works, thereby accentuating such concepts of the artist even more. So in I am a person, we will see Lee’s impromptu drawings covering an entire wall of the gallery. This exhibition will hold meaning in its attempt to summarize Lee’s artistic realm, showing in its entirety her essence and colorful inner world as an artist. It is our hope that the show will, just as its title suggests, be able to brilliantly demonstrate Lee’s uniqueness by illuminating the creative world of her as an individual person and an independent person.

Myungmi Lee was born in Daegu, and studied painting as an undergraduate and graduate student respectively at Hongik University. Lee had her first solo exhibition in 1977 at Grorich Gallery and went on to hold many more at various spaces including Tokyo Gallery(1993, Tokyo), Wooson Gallery(2020), Daegu Art Museum(2015), Indang Museum(2019), Gallery Shila(1996, 1997, 2002, 2018) and more. She was introduced as one of Korea’s avant-garde artists at ‘the Renegades in Resistance and Challenge’ exhibition(2018) at the Daegu Art Museum along with Kim Ku-Lim, Lee Kun-Young, Lee Seung-Teak and Lee Kang-So, and participated in many group exhibitions of avant-garde art that formed the basis for the birth of Korean contemporary art, including ‘The 1970’s of revival and the memory’, GangJeong Daegu Contemporary Art(2013), ‘Busan International Art Festival’, Busan Museum of Art(1998), ‘88 Korean Contemporary Art’(1988), Italy, ‘Korean Contemporary Art-Trend of 80's’, Kyoto Museum of Art(1987), and more.
Lee’s works adorn the walls of various institutions and enterprise buildings including the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Daegu Bank, Daegu, Daegu Culture and Arts Center, Daegu, Jung-gu District Office Daegu Metropolitan City, Daegu, Korea Institute of Machine & Materials, Daejeon, POSCO, Seoul, Hongik University Museum, Seoul, Busan Museum of Art, Busan, Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd., Ulsan, and more.