Keunmin Lee

"All around us, warm red, brown and dark tainted canvases create an ocean of voracious sensations that instinctively touch something deeper, beyond the surface not only of the canvas but also of the bodies and reality, already inside the subconscious."

—Elisa Carollo

Peres Projects is pleased to present Realizing Boundaries, an exhibition of new paintings by Keunmin Lee (b. 1982 in Yeongju, KR) at the gallery in Berlin. This marks Lee’s first exhibition with Peres Projects.

Keunmin Lee’s new series of oil paintings unfolds tormented cartographies. Networks of nervous lines meander across organic shapes, charting circuitous routes that read as intricate maps of the mind. The paintings on display hover between figuration and abstraction, depicting biomorphic forms that resemble zoomed-in fragments of bodies, organs, veins, or skin. Juxtaposing light and darkness, Lee works with rich palettes dominated by warm hues that are interspersed with icy blues. Varying shades of red saturate the exhibition. An allusion to blood, they serve as metaphorical markers that distinguish the outside world from inner ones. Despite their literal titles, the paintings elude rational grasp, emphasizing instead a raw physicality that shifts back and forth between meticulous brushwork and expressive mark making.

Keunmin Lee’s (b. 1982 in Yeongju, Korea) work, which comprises painting and drawing, delves into the meanders of the psyche. Drawing from his personal experiences with hallucinations and guided by instinctive gestures, Lee translates hallucinatory visions into visceral compositions characterized by rich red hues and meticulous brushwork. His paintings materialize enduring mental traces, as he engages in a cathartic process that turns the mind inside out. The forms he paints resemble magnified and abstracted fragments of flesh, muscle tissue, and veins, which seem to infuse each canvas with the heat, viscosity and pulsation of vital organs, thus eliciting a synesthetic experience that approaches the sublime.