Peres Projects opens its doors to a spectral universe with “Realizing Boundaries,” introducing Berlin to the enigmatic canvas conjurings of Keunmin Lee in what is a veritable initiation for the artist at the gallery. Born from the whispers of Yeongju, the Korean visionary’s fresh trove of oil paintings resemble psychic artefacts, their tremulous lines charting the intangible frontiers of the human psyche.
Keunmin Lee
Realizing Boundaries
till February 24, 2024 Opening Friday, January 19, 6–9 PM
www.instagram.com/painter_keunmin
peresprojects.com / www.instagram.com/peresprojects
Lee’s bold pantheon of thirteen works oscillates in the liminal—those spaces that teeter on the edge of figuration and abstraction. They are close-ups of otherworldly anatomy; think magnifications of the epidermis, sinew, and veins that pulse with an undercurrent of enigma. The colour palette is a chiaroscuro of the soul, warm, pulsing shades and frigid blues locked in an eternal dance, threaded by veins of red—harbingers of the visceral divide between the internal cosmos and the exterior realm.
Titles here are merely a pretence, a nod to the notion of comprehensibility, for Lee’s canvases defy the confines of the rational mind. Their energy wrests free from the meticulous technique, morphing into fierce gestural declarations. “Encounter in the Mountains” (2023) exemplifies this metamorphosis—the meticulous becomes tempestuous, technique yielding to a raw embodiment of internal tumult.
At the heart of these creations lies the interplay of the material and the immaterial, brought forth from Lee’s dance with phantoms in the wake of a 2001 diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Yet these are not mere retellings of those hallucinatory spectres but rather the emotive essence, the elusive impact captured within the canvas confines. Lee’s occasional embrace of unconventional media—plastic wrap tracing “Flesh Construction” (2023)—heightens the tangibility of his visceral tableau, an artist’s alchemy that translates the living pulse of internal landscapes.
An ode to outsider art’s untethered spirit, Lee’s technique is a testament to raw, unfettered creation, a liberation from the artifice of art culture. His pieces emerge from a profound introspection, a continuous conversation with his mental unwellness, redefining it from a stigmatized symptom to a source of untamed creative fuel. Each stroke on his canvas is a deliberate act of defiance against societal, medical, and systemic norms that seek to define and confine.
True to this rebellious spirit, Lee’s journey previously weaved through the innovative spaces of Space K and Gallery Dam in Seoul, among others, and brushed against the canvas of Mandy El-Sayegh at Lehmann Maupin. He’s no stranger to group renditions of creativity, having contributed to collections from Space K to Colección Solo in Madrid.
“Realizing Boundaries” is more than a display of Lee’s works; it’s a manifesto challenging one’s view of identity, urging a departure from the restraints of societal constructs. The exhibition dares to redefine anomalies, not as subjects of categorization but as agents of artistic revolution and identity reclamation.
