Hyun-Joung LEE

Imaginary journeys between earth and sky, paths between valleys and clouds, I invent starry paths where the eye wanders. My universe is poetic. Like an inner journey, I invite you to stroll, to follow me in these aerial views. They were born from the breath of my Korean childhood, from my eternal taste for painting, from my work with metal: from these three encounters, I created my universes.

From my past in Korea, I keep the memory of the materials, the beliefs of my ancestors.

The mulberry-plane tree paper is the skin of this memory, the enamel cups are its secret symbols. This paper lined the floors of the houses, I saw it from my height as a child. On it were printed the traces of footsteps, of life, and I was already imagining paintings, landscapes. In France, I took this raw material, I disaggregated it in water, remodeled to remove its smooth, native side, and create an irregular, more lively texture. I appropriated the paper of mulberry-plane tree to make more manifest and share my imaginary paths. Also, I paint, I underline with Indian ink, I sprinkle with Korean pigments, so that the volumes leave their silent whiteness and show these colorful worlds that inhabit me. My brush sometimes leaves alone and guides me, I got caught up in my own landscapes. I am like the viewer, the paper leads me through its strange directions, and I let myself be guided. Sometimes the reference to a forest is more significant, almost heavenly, sometimes the organic blue lines become more mysterious, almost disturbing. Everyone can plan. What dominates and transpires most of my personality is in serenity. From now on, it is between the clouds that I invite you to continue the journey, pleasant, calm.

Everyone experiences a painting in their own way and my past does not need to be revealed even if these little cups are in fact a symbolic heritage: we fill it with their life. A bowl is metaphysically given to us at birth. The size for everyone is different, but all of us use it. My little cups are these lives, so different, in bronze or oxidized silver, in polished brass, gilded, enamelled with colors, punctuated with a pearl. Lonely, grouped together, whether we see them as flowers or beings, whatever. They are in my landscapes more than a decoration, they are presences and for me, sometimes a whole people. They make my paths, paths of life.

From the roots of my childhood, my studies at the Beaux-Arts in Seoul, my training as a goldsmith in Paris, I have nourished my work. All these years have built my know-how. Yet it is not him that I want us to remember, but that thanks to him, we can rise more easily. I like the idea that a painting does not remain locked in a frame, above all an invitation to go elsewhere, to cross people. So I know that in turn, my paintings travel through their eyes, through their hearts.