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Hyun Jou Lee

 

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Born October6, 1965, in Korea.
As long as the artist can remember, painting has always been important to her. It was a way to express her feelings after being separated from her parents at a very young age. The organic shapes appearing in her works are often animated by a life of their own which echoes to all species that populate nature, a lot like the shells that she picked up as a child while strolling on the beach. Aren't those shapes souvenirs of a life that we try so hard to forget and that catches up to us? Nevertheless, those vestiges of the past are sometimes the only reassuring aspects. They are so familiar to us.
The gesture in her paintings is brisk, almost unfinished, stamped with a constant renewed freedom. In her constructions, multiple geometric shapes cross each other: circular arcs, triangles, squares, and broken lines. The isolated and entangled shapes are hence survivors of a battle where art is the battlefield.
The visions in her paintings are all attempts to reduce the time-space and to reconstruct the past, the present, and the future. "My work is part of this quest for an intimate bond between nature and myself," explains Ms Lee. But, very often, this translates into a tension between human desires and a power almost unnatural.

Although nature takes a very important place in her heart since her youth. Because what she misses the most from her native country are those pictures of the coastlines along the Eastern part of Korea. Long time before she left to Seoul, she would spend hours and hours watching the tide as if she would never see it again. Her long walk along the seashore then provided to her rest and warmth that she has since been looking for.
The movement on the canvas is brisk as moved by this thirst for freedom still unquenched. And the multiple forms isolated or intertwined bring a quiet and tranquil vision, the kind that would emerge after a terrible struggle between all the different forces of nature. The geometric constructions, sometimes barely visible, are then as marks of a fight where the canvas is a battlefield.

EDUCATION


1994-96 Studies at Saidye Bronfman Centre Art School
1992 B.F.A. (major in painting), Ewha Women University, Seoul, South Korea

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2000 Galerie Estampe Plus, Quebec1999 "Souvenirs d'Emwon," Centre de créativité du Gesù, Montreal, Canada
1998 "Inner Emergence," Belgo Building, Montreal, Canada


GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2000 Art Corée 2000, Quebec's Association of Korean Artists, La Cabosse d'or, Otterburn Park, Quebec

1999 Plein Sud, Longueuil, Canada

Perspectives '99, Living Arts Centre, Mississauga, Canada

Kamena Gallery & Frames, Edmonton, Canada

Asian Heritage Festival, Maison de la Culture Frontenac, Montreal, Canada1998 "Écrire la femme," Maison des Arts de Laval, Laval, Canada

Laboratoire, Montreal, Canada

1997 Complexe Guy Favreau, Montreal, Canada

"Tchou'sok Je," Chapelle historique du Bon Pasteur, Montreal, Canada

Cross-Cultural Exhibition, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada

1996 "Mémoires asiates," Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal, Canada

1995 Flower Festival, Faubourg Ste-Catherine, Montreal, Canada

1993 Young Artists Festival, Baksang Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

"The wave of appearance," Seoul Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

"Feminism," Dori Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

"From today to tomorrow," Kwanboon Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

1992 Ba Tang Go Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

COLLECTIONS
Her works are part of many private collections in Canada, France, South Korea and in the United States.
Corporation: Pratt & Whitney, Canada
Public: Bae Hwa Women's High School, Seoul, South Korea

PUBLICATIONS
Michelle Gagnon, "Cash & Carry Art - Act now," Hour, May 28 - june 3, 1998
"Lee Hyun Jou Solo Exhibition in Montreal," Korean Times, November 4, 1998
Émilie Poiret, "Espaces intérieurs," Vie des Arts, No 173, Winter 1998-99, p. 67
"Qui sont ces ethnies? - Montreal Asian Heritage Festival" May 13, 1999
"Lee Hyun Jou Art in Toronto," Korean Times, November 2, 1999

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