So Lee creates an immersive experiential environment by presenting her life-size figurative paintings hanging unstretched from the ceiling. Lee’s canvases exert a powerful sensory impact that is heightened by this unconventional approach, as her works are experienced collectively. Immersion is a concept one would normally associate with installations and electronic-media art, not necessarily with painting. Lee’s genre-bending style elevates her work into a conceptual realm.
Lee’s free approach is further evidenced in her varied handling of paint, which at times recalls washes of Color Field painting with thinly applied swaths of peach, green, and fuchsia, that she combines with precise and detailed figuration.
Thematically, Lee’s paintings are focused on the visual and psychological exploration of childhood and domestic environments. While traditionally presented as a safe, carefree, and happy time in one’s life, childhood is often one of the most treacherous and difficult periods to live through. Lee’s work offers a non-saccharine approach to the childhood representation. Heightened vulnerability, unprotected exposure to the complex world of adults and to the often-cruel peer-to peer dynamic invariably create psychological and physical tensions that are reflected in her work.
Sometimes covered or disguised, children with mute faces stand or sit in front of the viewer like frozen frames. Often coated with bright paint layers and realized on large-scale, her works exude theatrical enigma and produce a cinematic effect.
So Lee is a South Korean-born visual artist and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She has a degree in molecular biology and worked in the basic scientific research field, in both academia and the biomedical industry, as well as in business consulting. She received an MFA in studio art from the City College of New York (CUNY) in 2022. Her work has been included in a group exhibition and in a solo thesis show at CUNY in 2022, and in a group show at Chashama in 2022. So Lee currently resides in Brooklyn, NY with her two children.