Currently completing an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, Kyungseo Lee depicts the consequences of conflicting emotions and values in her practice. Her work has a spontaneous starting point to access her unconscious and from there on, images are worked upon and refined. She uses her self-awareness and confusion in her paintings, working with a loose painterly style where the figure soon dissolves into surface mark and gesture.

Christine says: “Despite the fact that the human body is an integral component of the artist’s practice, I like to call her painting a mental portrait. She portrays her contemplation of deeper layers of interiority in a spontaneous manner and accomplishes the final scene as a mixture of something hidden and something revealed after all. Each painting is a container for her reflection on the act of painting while processing her emotional states. She continues to explore the possibilities created by coincidence and spontaneity.”

Kyungseo Lee adds: “Themes or ideas of my paintings actually come from outside the art world. When I find difference between my view and others in conversation, that is when I start to think about my own ideas and this becomes the motivation of my work. Also, I try not to limit myself by appreciating diverse forms of art.

“Recently, my paintings have been morphing into abstractness. This mainly connects with the sense of dislocation while settling down in London as a foreigner, during which I have occasionally experienced uncertainties. The circumstance prompted me to contemplate about my subjectivity, understanding that one is a political body; I was confused whether certain behaviour in this country should be seen as general, i.e., social custom, or if they belong to particular people, i.e., personality trait. Also, finding myself reacting to someone’s behaviour differently from the way I would in my country, my practice began to discuss the consciousness of how the individual acts within a collective societal structure.”

In addition to focusing on her upcoming degree show at the Royal College of Art in July, Kyungseo Lee will be presenting six works in the Younhi art fair with gallery INN. It’s an annual event based in Younhi to connect young and emerging artists and collectors.