Youmee Lee

Biography

The wind in Jeju peeled off a layer of skin of artist Lee You Mee. The verbal sentiments which she has been long digging into without putting them down and the concrete forms unraveled in children’s view now and done delicately in terms of pathology now, they do not matter to the artist any more. Through the layer peeled off the author reaped one thing greater and more important. Like a monk to utter an old topic through a long painful asceticism there intensely remained plain and meditative essence itself in her works. As examining her works which treat existence in terms of cosmological point of view like Buddha preaches meaning of emptiness, I come up with a thought that what does matter is not secular reality of human being like everyday life, agony, relations and so on. May it be a clue? Maybe one thing she would not put down so far is the realization of its essence, not various expressions of forms themselves, which could not be reached out, and which thoughtful human being tries to pursue ceaselessly, I get to feel it afresh. Through these new works she tries to approach in a simple and powerful way and in restrained form, which is different from so far. As the meditative part of the characters is solely represented in the works, their structure from the secular to the holy is more expanded than before. Whereas that of <Searching for the road – He> reminds of the appearance of plain Buddha like the early statue of the Buddha, the work of <To Console thyself> gives such tranquil but desolate emotion as seeing the statue of Jesus Christ hung over the cross. Both are the forms of human being but they are not specified ones and show abstractness of the artist’s elaboration to try to pursue the essence.