Eun Young Lee

I have been painting nature for the last few years. I paint mountains, forests, rivers, beaches, the places that seem to be somewhere, but at the same time, I want them to look as if they don’t exist anywhere.
Nature is a mystery for me. Beautiful, weird, always there but constantly changing. I grew up in the countryside, a small village in South Korea which is surrounded by small mountains and fields and that’s pretty much all there is. I spent a lot of time looking closely at plants and insects. It felt curious, strange. Time seemed to flow very slowly.
Now I’m living and working in southern Germany. I often go and visit lakes and forests at the foot of the Alps. Standing in the coniferous forest filled with unfamiliar trees which don’t grow in my hometown, I often think of the home forest on the other side of the earth. It feels foreign and at home simultaneously.
Take something that looks all perfect and beautiful at a glance. Looking closely, things begin to shimmer and crack. It is a game I have been playing since I was a child, searching for this strange spot, the crack through which I can take a peek into a different place. The places in my painting like the swimming pool, beach, and secret garden become elements for me to play with, connect and disconnect, put together and tear apart. They have real locations but exist outside of the real world, as Foucault said of Heterotopia, as a physical approximation of the imaginary utopia.
I want my paintings to be a pathway to an ambiguous place, an undefinable place, a place in between. I imagine this strange and mysterious world made up of many thin layers, which is both inside and outside. Ordinary and extraordinary. Fleeting and eternal. I paint.

Vita

*1984, South Korea, lives and works in Munich, Germany

 

2014-today Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, Painting and Graphic Studies, Prof. Schirin Kretschmann, Prof. Axel Kasseböhmer, Germany
2018-2010 Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, MA in Communication Design, London, UK
2003-2008 Hongik University, BFA in Painting, Seoul, Korea
2006-2007 University College of London, Slade School of Fine Art, Exchange Study, London, UK
2006 Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts, Short course in Digital media, Cambridge, UK

 

Auszeichnungen

2019 Oskar-Karl-Forster-Stipendium-Fonds, Germany
2012 Artist Residency, 33 Officina Creativa, Toffia, Italy

Projekte / Ausstellungen

Solo
2012 Collection of peaches (solo), Petit Coin, London, UK
2012 Internal Landscape (solo), Mostart, London, UK

 

Group
2021 Art Tausch, Art Tausch New York, US
2020 Paintings and Books,Librairie Française à Munich, Germany
2019 Große Kunstausstellung, Arbeitskreis 68, Wasserburg am Inn, Germany
2019 KUNST AKTUELL – Jahresausstellung, Städtische Galerie Rosenheim, Rosenheim, Germany
2019 Gruppenausstellung, Kunst Block Balve, Munich, Germany
2019 ‘Liebling, ich habe die Bilder geschrumpft’, super+CENTERCOURT, Munich, Germany
2016 Target Partners, Munich, Germany
2012 Artists in residence show, 33 Officina Creativa, Toffia, Italy
2012 Little summer benefits, Cultivate gallery, London, UK
2011 Artists open studio, The Chocolate Factory N16, London, UK
2006 Exhibitionist, Michael House Gallery ,Cambridge, UK