Art Projects International

Art Projects International is pleased to announce the exhibition IL LEE: Works from the Collection.

Over the past nearly five decades, Il Lee has developed a body of work built on the principles of constant experimentation, curiosity in materials, and a dedication to a boundless process using singular lines to create, expand, and reduce form. His countless repetitive gestures and physical fortitude in mark-making culminate in works that challenge distinctions between abstract and representation, positive and negative space, as well as the act of painting and performance. Il Lee’s aesthetic expression through a basic utilitarian tool — exclusively the ballpoint pen — results in works (ballpoint ink on paper; ballpoint ink on canvas; ballpoint, oil, and acrylic on canvas) that are remarkable testaments to creative expression combining both his Dansaekhwa and traditional Asian ink sensibilities to master works that are wholly contemporary in look and feel.

Given the Dansaekhwa (monochromatic painting) movement associated with Korean artists that developed during the period Lee studied art in Korea (the 1960s and 1970s), many simply describe Lee as an heir to that movement. Although Il Lee has a better claim than most to this heritage — Lee Ufan’s influence was at its zenith during Il Lee’s time as a student, and Park Seo-Bo was his advisor during his junior and senior years in college. Il Lee’s work is best understood as the labor of an idiosyncratic pioneer who has not forgotten his origins but strives to create a larger space for himself on the global stage of contemporary art practice.

Lee moved to New York in 1977 and within four years was producing work using ballpoint pen that we recognize as the origins of his current practice. Through his exhibitions at Art Projects International in the 1990s, Il Lee started to become well known for these large-scale, non-representational works. Since that time, his line-based abstractions, both those in ballpoint pen and those made in paint have been widely exhibited at galleries, museums, and other institutions throughout the world.

Now, Works from the Collection at Art Projects International is a chance to see select recent examples of Il Lee’s mature style alongside master works from early in his career.

This current exhibition includes a masterwork BK-002 from 2006. Known for creating monumental forms by orchestrating layering of dynamic, free-flowing (yet highly controlled) ballpoint pen lines, BK-002 is non-representational but can be seen as one of Lee’s signature landscape silhouettes. Multitudes of black ballpoint ink lines create the pillar edges and, ultimately, form a mass of an elegant grove.  The same looping lines are less dense as the forest gives way and become individually visible — singular line building form and lines freeing themselves from form being an Il Lee hallmark.

IL LEE (b. 1952, Seoul, Korea. Lives and works in New York) is internationally celebrated for his pioneering work with ballpoint pen and a storied career spanning nearly five decades.  The significance of Lee’s artistic contributions, use of unorthodox media, and singular sensibility have received worldwide recognition. Born and raised in Seoul, Lee studied painting in the 1960s and 1970s with seminal figures of South Korean contemporary art including those in the vanguard of the abstract monochrome painting (Dansaekhwa) movement.  In 1977, armed with a distinct cultural background and artistic training, Lee moved to New York where he developed his signature process and style using ballpoint pen, a medium important to his practice over the decades. In his recent acrylic and oil works on canvas, Lee offers a counterpoint to his well-known ballpoint pen work and continues his early investigations of materials and process that began decades ago.  His large acrylic and oil on canvas work along with his ballpoint ink works on paper were exhibited in Representation/Abstraction in Korean Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010, and his innovative and historically grounded ballpoint pen works were the subject of a groundbreaking mid-career retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art in 2007.  Work by Il Lee is represented in prominent collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA), Palm Springs Art Museum, Nerman Museum of Art (NMOCA), Vilcek Foundation, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul), Société Bic (France), Montefiore Fine Art Collection, and Bank of America among others.

For further information and to schedule a private visit or preview, please contact api@artprojects.com or 212.343.2599.

© 2006 Art Projects International