ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL presents《Surging Waves》, a solo exhibition by LEE Eunsil (b. 1983), on view from 17 December 2025 to 31 January 2026. The exhibition marks a condensed and pivotal phase in the artist’s long-term painterly inquiry, foregrounding the intersection where bodily experience and social affect converge.

LEE Eunsil’s painting originates from the technical foundations of East Asian ink painting, yet it decisively departs from the domains of traditional representation and lyrical expression. Rather than depicting emotional “states,” her work has consistently focused on emotional “processes”—how feelings emerge, fluctuate, collide, and disperse.
 
Desire, anxiety, tension, and release are not articulated through linear narratives but operate as overlapping waves that vibrate across the pictorial surface.

From her early practice onward, LEE has resisted treating the inner self as an autonomous realm detached from social conditions. Instead, she has persistently examined how emotions are shaped by social norms, roles, and external gazes—particularly in relation to the ways female bodies and emotions are regulated and codified within society.
 
This critical awareness does not surface through explicit statements or didactic imagery; rather, it is embedded obliquely within the density of paint, rhythm, and layered sensations.

In《Surging Waves》, LEE foregrounds the experience of childbirth. Childbirth functions here not only as a biological event, but also as a social phenomenon and an accumulation of profoundly private sensations. The artist does not attempt to describe childbirth iconographically.
 
Instead, she translates the internal aftershocks it leaves behind—pain, fear, tension, elation, and release—into the rhythm and intensity of the painted surface. Repetitive, wave-like brushstrokes, compressed energy saturating the canvas, and compositions that resist a fixed center collectively visualize a state in which emotion remains in perpetual motion.

Through this process, childbirth expands beyond a personal narrative into an existential threshold that the human body and psyche must inevitably traverse. Aspects of childbirth that have often been idealized or suppressed—its uncontrollable sensations and internal ruptures—are rendered with an almost raw immediacy. Rather than reducing female experience to a fixed identity, LEE repositions it within a broader inquiry into human vulnerability and the fundamental conditions of life.

《Surging Waves》can be read as both a turning point and a moment of convergence within LEE Eunsil’s artistic trajectory. Emotional strata and painterly experiments accumulated over years surface here with heightened intensity, allowing personal experience to resonate as a structure of contemporary affect. The exhibition quietly yet firmly affirms painting as a viable medium for thinking through the body, sensation, and experiences that resist verbal articulation.

About the Artist
 
LEE Eunsil received her BFA and MFA in East Asian Painting from Seoul National University. Since then, she has continuously explored the expanded possibilities of painting while working across Korea and abroad. Her solo exhibitions include ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL (2025), No.9 Cork Street, London (2024), P21 (2021), YOUARTSPACE (2019), and Doosan Gallery New York (2016).

She has participated in major group exhibitions at institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art; Leeum Museum of Art; and Ilmin Museum of Art. Her works are held in prominent public and private collections, attesting to the institutional recognition of her sustained artistic inquiry.
 

 
Exhibition Information

Exhibition Title: LEE Eunsil:《Surging Waves》
Dates: 17 December 2025 – 31 January 2026
Venue: ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL
Support: Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
Program: Selected Project of the 2025 Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture Artistic Creation Support Program
Visitor Information:
– The exhibition opens to the public from 11:00 AM on 17 December 2025
– Opening Reception: 17 December 2025 (Wednesday), 5:00 PM
– Due to limited parking availability, visitors are kindly advised to use public transportation