Exhibitions
Epochal Dimensions (Nov 9 - Nov 25, 2018) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe
‘Epochal Dimensions’ presents a new series of paintings which explores a desire for rediscovery and growth. Focusing on the contrast between the various elements of the paintings, the value of traditional context is visibly reflected through the shapes originated from geometry, nature and Lee’s heritage. Cultural importance is a central theme in this exciting new series.
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Monochromatic Explorations (July 22 - Aug 7, 2016) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe
Hyunmee Lee's solo show at Nuart Gallery titled 'Monochromatic Explorations' coincided with Lee's arrival to Santa Fe. The monochromatic works were inspired by earlier works that she wanted to bring into fruition. This technique provided an excellent vehicle for the expressions of depth and space.
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Abstract Alchemy II (Feb 29 - April 30, 2016) Southwest Branch of the Weber Public Libraries
For the grand opening of the Weber County Library (designed by Prescott Muir Architects) Lee, recipient of the 2015 Fellowship Award for Visual Arts Excellence, was invited for a solo exhibit. The library purchased a painting from the exhibition for their permanent collection. The meditative gestural qualities of Lee's work in large scale provided a striking visual experience for the audience of the grand opening. artistsofutah.org
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Markedly Minimal (Aug 21 - Sept 11, 2015) Philips Gallery, Salt Lake City
This solo exhibition was designed to celebrate Lee receiving a fellowship from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. This is the first time Hyunmee Lee has exhibited her ceramic works, a wonderful multimedia display of multidimensional layering and monochromatic shape. This collections contained a large reliance on the relationship between gesture and meditation.
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Abstract Alchemy (May 13 - June 13, 2015) Cheryl Hazan Gallery, New York
"The beauty of Lee's work has a potent alchemy, partly rooted in the process of transmuting paint into a substance of value - her superb recent paintings; partly in the incorporation of symbols in the form of mark making and Eastern calligraphy into her oppositional gestural work. There is a new awareness of Korean shamanism, the strength of a self in quietness, a deeply meditative ritual that brings an awakening of magical power. Lee's paintings are glimpses of Zen. She effetively has added colors, shapes and rhythms that arise from the birds and mountains surrounding her remote studio." (From an essay by Ann Poore)
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Still Winds (Aug 8 - 24, 2014) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Continuing to expand the possibilities of gestural painting by adding calligraphic strokes, careful geometries and Taoist "unconscious gestures," Lee with this rich exhibition of new works explores the various possible resolutions of abstraction, particularly in showing the depth of mark making that often defines her work.
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Beautiful Disaster (Aug 2 - 18, 2013) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
New solo series "Beautiful Disaster" and "Improvisation" with "Native Mumbling." My canvas is a place to feel both emptiness and fullness. Contrast and imbalance of shapes and lines are playful and floating around.
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Silent Gesture (Dec 17 - Jan 12, 2013) Tinney Contemporary, Nashville, Tennessee
A solo show presenting Lee's most recent body of work in the "Native Mumbling" Series. In these recent "Silent Gesture" paintings, Lee seeks to combine opposing forces to reflect her own life, which conveys both East and West. In her vibrant black and yellow canvases, nonrepresentational and representational forms inspired by her roots are brought out slowly through silent gesture.
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Native Mumbling: Sori Sori (Dec 30 - Jan 24, 2012) Julie Nester Gallery, Park City, Utah
Solo exhibit of "Native Mumbling" series. "Sori" means sounds, "sori sori" delivers echoing footsteps of Lee's own personal journey.
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Native Mumbling: Da Da Ga Ga (July 15 - 31, 2011) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Solo exhibit of "Native Mumbling" series. The essence of this collection of work is Lee's individual journey of writing meditation. "Native Mumbling" is a personal arrival to a meditative state where the Korean letters become gestures.
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Native Mumbling: Ma Ba Sa (June 18 - July 18, 2011) Cheryl Hazan Gallery, New York
Solo exhibit of "Native Mumbling" series. "Gestural paintings on canvas Sounds is made visible as subtle energy in Hyunmee Lee's deceptively simple paintings. A cross pollination of traditions, combining Eastern calligraphy with Western gestural abstraction- Lee is grounded in the mid 20th century, yet transcends categorization in time..."
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Native Mumbling: Ga Na Na Ra (Oct 15 - Nov 11, 2010) Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah
A solo exhibit presenting the "Native Mumbling" series for the first time. "...Hyunmee Lee uses both actual Korean letters in their complete forms, as well as the gesture and essence of the letters' shapes. So lovely is her ability to convey harmony on canvas, it seems effortless - there are no signs of struggle or forced effect. What results is poetry. Limiting her work to words in like describing the subtleties of personal occurrence to a stranger." (From the exhibit catalogue)
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Inland Crossing (Aug 14 - 30, 2009) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Hyunmee Lee's 20th solo show, exhibiting current works: "Inland Island," "Inland Crossing," and "Contact-Sensation." The works bring a harmonious marriage of Western abstraction and Eastern sensibility.
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Dimensional Poetics (Jan 30 - Feb 25, 2009) Julie Nester Gallery, Park City, Utah
Solo show presenting "Inland Island" paintings. This series engages Lee's personal journey in three continents. "Inland Island" paintings are minimal, yet her large canvases with bold yellow against monochromatic opposition are highly energetic.
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Meditative Gesture (Nov 7 - Dec 31, 2008) Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
Solo exhibit. "With their open planes of luminous yellow, the Inland Island series lifts the extended metaphor of Lee's personal journey to a more vibrant and lyrical level. The subject further alludes to her current physical environment, but now there is a life-enabling purity and lightness of touch that contrasts remarkably with heavily grounded Mountain Armatures of six years before. The contradictory space of the dry desert sea is not set in time. Instead it is energized by a very real presence - powerful blacks that read like close-up fragments of larger calligraphic forms..." (from an essay by Dr. Brice Adams)
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Contact-Sensation: The Harmony of Opposites (Oct 10 - 26, 2008) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Solo show. "Combining intuitive line, nonrepresentational forms, and monochromatic spaces, Lee's newest works are confident, eloquent, and purely Hyunmee Lee. Strong forms advance from buttery canvases like an abstract garden, while gauzy veils of paint hover like soft air against the ebony weight of matter. Light peeks through translucent shapes like sunlight illuminating through soft mist..."
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Touch: Meditation Joins Gesture (Sep 19 - Oct 30, 2008) Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah
Solo show, presenting the "Dimensional Poetics," "Contact-Sensation," "Inland Island," and "Seraphic Stone" series. "In her current exhibition, Touch, on display at the Phillips Gallery in Salt Lake City, Utah, Lee focuses on the power of the shape, asserting the desire for her work to become "more simple and bold" as "inspired by a concept of 'freedom' from the world" and from the artist's own mind." (from an essay by Courtney R. Davis)
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Foreordained Gesture (Aug 3 - 19, 2007) Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Solo show presenting "Thousand of Roads," "Elysian Foot," and "Seraphic Stone," seres. The paintings in "Foreordained Gesture" take their inspiration from both nature and the examination of the conscious and unconscious mind. They also reflect the energy of Korean calligraphy.
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Intimacy without Restraint (June 3 - July 9, 2006) Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah
Solo exhibit. "Confronting the paintings of Hyunmee Lee, what impresses is their celebration of gesture and depiction of a nearly unlimited sense of space. Abstract and intuitively painterly, her aesthetic is one of immediacy perpetually seeking its own nature..."
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Outside Sight (March 17 - Apr 14, 2006) Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah
Solo show, in conjunction with the "Intimacy without Restraint" exhibit at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
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When Gesture Finds Its Power (March 3 - April 30, 2005) Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah
Solo show presents "Creation" and "90 Days of Improvisations" series
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Mountain Armature (Sep 21 - Nov 15, 2002) Woodbury Gallery, Orem, Utah