• Yoora Lee 's work explores the shifting relationship between memory, reality and mediated images.

    Working primarily from found imagery sourced from television, film and the internet, Lee reconstructs scenes that exist somewhere between recollection and fiction. Her paintings often depict figures within domestic and cinematic spaces, where different moments in time appear to overlap, creating an atmosphere of familiarity that remains elusive.

     

    Lee’s practice is rooted in the experience of growing up during the transition from analogue to digital media. Drawing particularly on television and imagery from the 1990s, she considers the ways that memories are formed through images we encounter rather than experiences we directly remember. Her paintings draw on the visual language of VHS footage, Japanese anime and City Pop, using these references not simply as markers of a particular era but as vehicles through which nostalgia can be constructed, distorted and reconsidered. The resulting scenes occupy an uncertain space between personal memory and collective cultural memory.

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    Central to Lee’s paintings is her distinctive treatment of the picture surface. She works through multiple thin layers, building wavering horizontal brushstrokes that interrupt and soften the image, recalling the distortion of analogue video and the flicker of a screen. Subtle, often cool-toned palettes further heighten this sense of distance, giving her paintings a hazy, almost cinematic quality. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, Lee allows her images to remain open-ended, inviting the viewer to project their own memories and associations onto the scene.

     

    Figures in Lee’s paintings frequently appear anonymous or emotionally distant, their gestures and surroundings suggesting moments of isolation, longing and uncertainty. Windows, screens and reflected spaces create further layers within the composition, disrupting a clear sense of time and place. In this way, Lee uses painting to examine the space between what is remembered and what is imagined, questioning how images can shape our understanding of both the past and the present.

     

    Lee was born in South Korea. She received her BFA in Painting from Gachon University in 2015 and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at Nicodim, Los Angeles; Nicodim, New York; T293, Rome; Another Place, New York; and Jude Gallery, Chicago. Her work has also been presented in exhibitions across the United States, Europe and Asia, and at international art fairs including The Armory Show and Dallas Art Fair. In 2020, Lee was a finalist for the Hopper Prize.

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