Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

In 2008, the second exhibiton, 《Story of Silence》 held at the Gallery Jungmiso(Seoul), began to present works depicting psychological scenes triggered by personal memories.

After the exclusive contract with Arario Gallery, her works have been introduced in various countries, including BAIKART Gallery(Los Angeles, USA), EDWINS Gallery(Jakarta, Indonesia), and Triumph-gallery(Moscow, Russia). Most recently, 《The Unperceived》 was exhibited at the Arario Museum in Space(Seoul) in 2020.

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

She participated in exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art(Seoul), Korean Cultural Center(Brussels, Belgium), Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul), Whanki Museum(Seoul), Indipress Gallery(Busan), American University Museum(Washington, USA), OCI Museum (Seoul), and Ilmin Museum(Seoul).

Awards (Selected)

She awarded 2nd prize at the 3rd Gwangju Hwaru Award(Gwangju Bank, Korea), the 14th Songeun Art Award(Songeun, Seoul), the 31st JoongAng FineArts Prize(The JoongAng, Seoul).

Collections (Selected)

Her works are in collections of various museums such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art(Gwacheon), Seoul Museum of Art(Seoul), Gyeonggi Culture Foundation(Suwon), POSCO Art Museum(Seoul), Gyeongnam Art Museum(Changwon), OCI Museum(Seoul) and Nesrin Esirtgen Collection(Istanbul, Turkey).

Originality & Identity

Lee Jinju’s paintings explore memory through everyday objects and landscapes. What lies in the enigmatic picture is a scene of the silent catastrophe, sometimes painful and cruel.

The objects in the paintings imitate concrete objects and places that we can easily find as everyday and trivial things, things to wear or eat, and things that wear out or disappear with use. However, the overall story structure and causal relationship are lacking, leaving the viewer to experience as if they have entered an unrealistic imaginary world.

Although it is difficult to explain what is happening in the painting or to guess the logical continuity between the parts, Lee Jinju’s artworks have the power to grab the audience’s attention. We contemplate where the small objects in the picture come from, and we follow the action of the characters and look inside.

This powerful pictorial power comes from the strikingly realistic and precise expression of forms and textures. The artist’s sophisticated and detailed descriptive power, who uses oriental painting media, draws vague and ambiguous situations to the point of being surreal with very clear moods.

The unfamiliar world of people and objects with realistic appearances contains the thoughts the artist draws from her daily life and memories. This includes questions about the realm of human knowledge or belief and its boundaries; how memory works, social events, thoughts about family and death, landscapes of a house with a yard, and traumas from the past that are difficult to put into words.

The fragments are naturally connected to create a single organic screen. What appears in the artist’s paintings is both an image and a world in contact with reality, and an unpredictable place where stories whose full story is unknown are repeated.

“It depicts a world of psychological subjectivity but also of contradictions at the same time. I’d like to put my reality in this realistic world.”

Lee Jinju’s work depicts our unstable existence that rational language and social norms always try to hide. Sometimes, people escape for a while into the memories or imagination, but those also come from reality. The artist’s paintings are to face reality by continuously recalling and stroking memories, and emphasizing and communicating with ordinary people living together.

Style & Contents

Just as our language and thinking are not perfect, our memories are forgotten and lost. Lee Jinju explores how memories are distorted by constantly changing and adding the present. In the artist’s quiet and refined paintings, we see the bodies, skin, hands, and amputate bodies of characters who do not speak. From the characters who appear repeatedly here and there on the screen, it can be seen that the story in the picture is non-linear.

The object in the work is focused on expressing the sensations or memories they trigger rather than the object themselves. The meaning of the objects selected only with the artist’s private and intimate sense is left unknown, and we can only guess what the allegory is.

Lee Jinju makes various trials for precise and meticulous descriptions. To draw realistically, she tries to make a real object in a shape similar to the image. When using oriental painting media, rather than sticking to the traditional method, the materials are appropriately changed and selected according to the nature of the work.

In oriental paintings, colour paintings usually use ‘long paper,’ but the cotton paper is used as a support to simplify the preparation process and to revise sketches. In the ‘Black Painting’ series (2017~), after several experiments for a more dramatic production, the paint was newly blended to maximize high saturation and matte texture.

The unique spatiality of Lee Jinju’s works is also impressive. The land where the characters are located hides an underground space that appears to be floating and seems to be a realm of the unconscious.

The fragmented earth appears to have been carved out of a large planet or part of an infinite territory, and the artist creates a three-dimensional stage on a flat surface with a detailed perspective. The clarity of uniform brightness without contrast of light fills the entire screen, and all elements are realistically drawn with consistent proportions and viewpoints.

Topography & Continuity

Lee Jinju’s first solo exhibition in the United States was held at Doosan Gallery New York (NY, 2014), where she received a lot of attention for her contemporary paintings that combine traditional oriental painting techniques with a modern sensibility. Dominic Nahas, who teaches art history at Pratt Institute and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Critics (AICA-USA), mentioned that Lee Jinju’s works provide a captivating experience not to be missed.

The unique storytelling and the phantasmagoric screen that mixes reality and unreality create a unique art world of Lee Jinju. Additionally, the flat and matte surface texture of oriental paintings has a different charm from Western Paintings.

Lee Jinju not only uses materials for oriental paintings such as cotton papers and pigments but also applies elements such as black space and movement of viewpoints in oriental paintings to the composition of the screen if necessary. A shape canvas is used, or the exhibition space itself is used as a blank space for the work by carefully planning the room.

Recently, the artist introduced an installation method that occupies space by arranging one and a half centimeters of level paintings using three-dimensional structures. < The Unperceived > (2020), a large-scale painting placed in an A-shaped structure, is a work where the entire screen cannot be seen at a glance anywhere.

For the viewer to appreciate the work, he or she has to keep moving and follow the objects in the painting. This induction creates a spectator movement similar to the visual experience that occurs when appreciating the long scrolls of oriental paintings.

Lee Jinju’s artworks repeat various experiments like this, and it is actively being introduced internationally through a partnership with Arario Gallery, an exclusive gallery. Her works show the traditional yet most modern aspects of contemporary painting.

Its media characteristics and outstanding visual perfection are factors with great potential to attract global attention. It is looked forward to the artist’s future activities, constantly changing and creating a new form of Korean painting.