Kasia Kay Art Projects is pleased to announce Father’s Law, artist Rim Lee’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The show features mixed media paintings exhibiting a range of the artist’s practice from her realist and surrealist approach to early work as well as her most recent abstract inventions. An overall focus on the intensity of human emotion is palpable on the walls while an evolution of her ideas is revealed as the pieces unfold.

Lee’s oldest work in the show is a self-portrait, an oil painting titled Absence, which captures a dramatic yet representational image of the artist’s former ideas. This is how the artist’s journey began. The process to make these kind of portraits starts with the application of black paint, either onto Lee’s own body or another model’s nude figure. Documentation photographs of this performance are then re-translated onto a painting through a highly technical process. Both media – of photography and paint – serve as a vehicle to transform a stylistic female form onto canvas in order to tear away the surface between artist and audience. Lee was able to let go of her timidity with these series of paintings and expose an undiscovered part of herself.

Breaking away drastically from this type of performative painting, Lee recently began to make abstract creations – mixed media and oil works mostly on canvas and paper, many of which are present in this exhibition. She was looking to change the style of her artistic communication and add layers to the meaning they conveyed. These abstract works allowed her to be more impulsive and pushed her to use more experimental and bold color. What you see on the walls is not only the expressive gesture rather also the expressive body, trying to discard and re-locate itself within the painted surface.

Rim Lee is an important internationally collected Korean artist who recently exhibited her work at Love Actually, Seoul Museum, Seoul, South Korea (2013), and Can Can China!, Space Can Beijing, Beijing, China (2013). Previously, she has also participated in the Korean Eye Exhibit at MAD, NYC, Korean Eye-Fantastic Ordinary (2010) and Korean Eye-Moon Generation (2009), Saatchi Gallery in London. At Kasia Kay Art Projects, Rim Lee was featured in The Body a 2-person exhibition with Claudia Hart as well as been a part of many international art fairs including: Art Chicago 2010 and 2011 and scope Miami 2011 last December. In 2010 Lee was nominated for the Perrier Jouet Award.

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Tags: Kasia Kay Gallery, Rim Lee, West Loop