Eunsae Lee (b. 1987) captures moments of unstable change encountered through the internet, media, and everyday life. She expresses subtle undercurrents flowing through ordinary scenes in her paintings or collects various frustrations from daily life along with the rebellious imaginations they provoke, recording them as images.

Eunsae Lee captures fleeting sensations—subtle, intangible moments that cannot be seen or grasped—within her paintings. This approach took shape in her ‘Stone Throwing’ series, which she began in 2012. Inspired by the sight of people tossing stones into a still pond, blurring the boundary between the water’s surface and its depths while creating ripples, she translated this scene into her paintings. 

In doing so, Lee sought to depict not only the physical ripples on the water but also the invisible waves that arise within both the stone thrower and the observer in that moment. With this series as a starting point, she began painting the countless waves of change that occur in everyday life.

The moments of change and the sensations that emerge in Eunsae Lee’s work are deeply rooted in the everyday. She records fleeting instances of unstable waves discovered by chance—whether in the scenery she passes on her way to the studio, images from the news, internet, or newspaper articles, scenes from films, or conversations with friends. 

For example, Crumbling Crack (2014) depicts a construction site she happened to see while walking through Jongno-gu, Seoul. The artist reflects that despite the continuous efforts of people at construction sites to seal the gaps, the way the cracks push through seemed to metaphorically reflect the situation the artist felt in society at the time. To emphasize the crumbling fissures and the internal ripples they stirred within her, Lee rendered the figures with soft, indistinct lines, focusing more on the atmosphere of the moment than on individual details.

Inspired by a scene from a novel, Cutting the Ice-Cream (2014) visualizes the subtle currents or ripples Eunsae Lee seeks to convey through her paintings. She likens these intangible sensations to a solid, unyielding mass of ice cream. The painting depicts people attempting to cut a large block of ice cream placed on a table. However, it is too firm to be sliced, continuously slipping away and melting onto the surface.

This imagery reflects a passage from a novel that described the unformed, muddled state of thoughts before they are articulated in words. Lee found a parallel between this idea and her own artistic process, viewing her paintings as an attempt to express similarly elusive sensations—just like the solid chunk of ice cream.

In this way, Eunsae Lee translates the landscapes and moments she witnesses onto canvas, capturing reality from the perspective of an observer. In her early works, she freely extracted and painted scenes without concern for their original context. However, at some point, she began to feel uneasy about this approach. She started questioning whether she had the right to consume and transform the reality she witnessed into images at her discretion. 

This inquiry led her to reflect not only on her own artistic process but also on the broader mechanisms of media that produce and consume images. As she explored these concerns, Lee became particularly interested in figures that are easily objectified. She began depicting fractured, unyielding figures—images that resist being defined or conforming to imposed narratives.

For example, ㅗㅗ (2016) appears to borrow the imagery of provocative poses and young girls commonly seen in internet culture or adult magazines. However, the girl in the painting subverts these expectations—she faces forward with a blank expression, defiantly raising her middle finger, rejecting the stereotype of the "obedient and innocent girl." 

In The girls of the Viking (2016), Lee captures the carefully maintained composure of female idols in front of the camera. At one point, a viral video showed a girl group riding a Viking ship amusement park ride. The broadcast expected (or even intended) for these young, beautiful women to lose control, creating amusing or embarrassing moments for the audience.

Viewers eagerly anticipated these so-called "humiliating snapshots." However, rather than succumbing to this expectation, the idols continuously adjusted their hair and maintained an unwavering expression, determined not to leave behind an unflattering image.

In her solo exhibition at Alternative Space Loop in 2018, Eunsae Lee presented her representative ‘Night Freaks’ series, which focuses on drunk women. However, in her work, these women are not depicted as victims, weak figures, or targets of crime—stereotypical images often imposed on them. Instead, Lee paints them based on real individuals she has encountered, portraying their presence beyond objectification. 

Eunsae Lee depicted a range of drunk individuals in various situations, from women joyfully strolling along the beach at night to those vomiting after being forced to drink and offering it to others, friends sitting outside a police station, and disheveled figures baring their teeth in a wild, unrestrained manner.

The figures Eunsae Lee depicts are drunk yet free, refusing to exist as victims or easy targets of crime, even if they vomit and collapse at dawn. Regarding this series, the artist stated, “In the time and space of the night, where threats are easily imposed, these figures are not defenseless but rather aggressive night freaks—staring back, acting boldly, and ready to launch a terrifying counterattack against their would-be aggressors.”

Meanwhile, in the 2020 solo exhibition 《As Usual》, held at Gallery2, Lee focused on the differences that arise when images in a fluid, unsettled state in her mind are translated into drawings or paintings, and worked to bridge the gap between the two genres.

Lee combines scenes from recorded photographs or memories with images that emerge from her imagination in her paintings. Drawing, which allows for a more spontaneous and rapid fixation of these images, plays a key role in this process. The drawings, appearing awkward, fragmented, distorted, and complex, remain in an unresolved and incomplete state, yet hold significant potential. In contrast, paintings are created more cautiously, following multiple drawing iterations, resulting in a more assured and deliberate work.

In this exhibition, the artist aimed to capture both the clear simplification of drawing and the deliberate progression of painting on a single canvas, embodying this dual rhythm. Along with her approach to painting, she also introduced a new exploration of media. By using an airbrush, which allows for larger, exaggerated expressions and a wider range for shaping forms compared to a brush, she expanded the formal and media boundaries of her artistic world.

In 2021, Eunsae Lee participated in 《IMA Picks 2021》 at the Ilmin Museum of Art, where she introduced new works that broke free from traditional painting structures by using unconventional materials like PET film and steel sheets alongside the canvas. These materials function as artistic devices to disrupt the one-way circuit in which images are objectified and consumed.

The flat surfaces created in this way are not mere reproductions of what is seen but are filled with specific actions that blend perception, consciousness, and the moment of suspension during the process of cutting and polishing materials. Due to the reflective nature of the materials, viewers, while observing the artwork, also encounter their own reflection.

However, the imperfect surface does not fully show the viewer's image but rather distorts it into a blurry, unclear form, placing them within the same frame as the artist's work, which reveals imperfection and unease.

In her recent solo exhibition 《Mite Life》 (Gallery2, 2023), Eunsae Lee presented paintings that intertwine her personal, everyday experiences with elements of Korean folklore. This work began with the artist’s experience of coming home after drinking, feeling too lazy to go out for water, and drinking from a bottle of water she had forgotten when he had filled it. While her thirst was quenched, she felt uneasy and spent the night feeling as though he had overeaten, which led her to recall the story of the Buddhist philosopher Wonhyo (617-686 CE) and his skull water.

According to the Song Dynasty text Imgallok (林間錄: Anecdotes from the Groves [of Chan]), Wonhyo, while traveling to Tang China with his companion Uisang, drank stagnant water from a skull and attained the realization that 'everything depends on the mind.' Although the content of this anecdote does not directly overlap with the artist's personal experience, the artist found a connection in the idea that change begins from seemingly ordinary and trivial objects.

Eunsae Lee reinterprets water as a portal through which emotional changes, shifts in thought, and the overlap of different dimensions or ways of thinking occur. She chose to depict it as a still life, remaining motionless and unchanging in its essence. Along with this, the artist created an unfamiliar and ambiguous image, where historical records, personal experiences, the past and present, as well as representational and abstract elements, all intertwine.

She expresses that she wanted to show the “something” that emanates from stationary objects. This “something” might be referring to the way a familiar object, at some point, evokes various thoughts, imaginations, and emotional changes, overturning narrow-minded thinking.

Through this approach, Eunsae Lee conveys the currents of change and emotional shifts detected in the small emotions and events of daily life through the language of painting. In particular, she captures moments that fracture images taken for granted or become fixed, expressing states of the world that cannot be easily defined, explained in words, or neatly categorized—ambiguous, complex, and contradictory in nature.

“I think painting is a vessel that can contain all of the ambiguous states of the world. It’s a tool that can express things that are hard to put into words, even the contradictory ones.” (Eunsae Lee, W Concept Interview, January 10, 2020)

Eunsae Lee graduated from Hongik University with a Bachelor’s degree in Painting, and received her Master’s degree in the School of Visual Art, Korea National University of Arts. She has held solo exhibitions at institutions such as L21 (Mallorca, Spain), PHD Group (Hong Kong), Alternative Space Loop (Seoul), Gallery2 (Seoul), and Gallery Chosun (Seoul).

Recent group exhibitions Lee has participated in include 《Art Spectrum: Dream Screen》 (Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Gulp》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2024), 《Hexed, Vexed and Sexed》 (West Den Haag, Hague, NL, 2023), 《Minimalism-Maximalism-Mechanissmmm Act 1–Act 2》 (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2022), 《Young Korean Artists 2019: Liquid Glass Sea》 (MMCA, Gwacheon, 2019), and more.

Lee was selected as an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2025-2026) and has previously participated in residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands (2023-2025), Incheon Art Platform (2021), MMCA Goyang Residency (2020), and SeMA Nanji Residency (2019).

References

• 이은새, Eunsae Lee (Artist Website)
• 학고재, 이은새 (Hakgojae Gallery, Eunsae Lee)
• 헬로! 아티스트, 이은새: 찰나에 퍼지는 감각의 물결
• OCI 미술관, 책의 무덤 (OC뉴시스, 이은새, 힘의 근본성 자문하다…‘길티-이미지-콜로니’, 2016.12.28
• 대안공간 루프, 이은새 개인전: 밤의 괴물들 (Alternative Space Loop, Eunsae Lee Solo Exhibition: Night Freaks)
• 인천문화통신 3.0, 인천아트플랫폼 입주 예술가: 이은새, 이희준, 정금형, 2021.08.17
• 갤러리2, As usual : 늘 마시던 걸로 (Gallery2, As usual)
• 일민미술관, IMA Picks 2021 (Ilmin Museum of Art, IMA Picks 2021)
• 보그 코리아, 서로 다른 시대를 살아온 여성 작가 3인의 삼중주, 2023.02.12