LEE Jihyun

LEE Jihyun (b. 1979) reimagines images of remembered places through the language of painting. By layering scenes from past and present, reality and imagination, public and private spaces, she constructs distinctive, dreamlike landscapes. Her work explores how layered memories of multiple spaces can coexist and form relationships within a single picture plane. Images drawn from disparate contexts are brought together to interact on the canvas, acquiring new meaning through the associative mechanisms of memory. A dedicated painter, LEE is deeply attuned to the material qualities of her medium. She deliberately reveals brushstrokes and traces of pigment across fields of color, emphasizing the physicality of oil paint, while carefully calibrating composition and palette to heighten visual impact.

Born in Seoul in 1979, LEE Jihyun earned her BFA and MFA in Western Painting from Sungshin Women’s University, later receiving an MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Since her debut in a group exhibition in 2000, she has held solo exhibitions at venues including Art Space Hue (2004), ARARIO GALLERY BEIJING (2006), Doosan Gallery New York (2012), Doosan Gallery Seoul (2013), and ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (2008; 2022). She has also participated in group exhibitions organized by major institutions such as the Seoul Museum of Art, Busan Museum of Art, Ilmin Museum of Art, and Alternative Space LOOP in Korea, as well as international venues in the United States, Switzerland, and Japan. Her works are held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Government Art Bank and Art Bank, ARARIO MUSEUM, and other institutions.