Mire Lee (b. Korea, 1988) is known to create kinetic sculptural installations that appear shabby, ridiculous, and precarious. Lee questions human fantasies of technologies that contradict the realities of subjects that decay and deform through time. Lee’s work challenges notions of selfhood, social acceptability, and cleanliness; obliterating societal conventions of aesthetics and desire in the face of her orgasmic, transgressive and kinetic technologies. Towels, chains, clay, silicon hoses, and steel structures coalesce to form an organism that is haptic, primordial, and yet highly mechanized. Lee’s works engage the senses in a visceral way, outside the realm of intellect and language.
In works like Carriers, tentacular appendages amidst a milky rain of glycerin activate a sense of deeply personal indiscretion within the viewer, their projections of vorarephilia functioning as an emblem of solidarity with the increasingly suffocating realities of the anthropocene, consequences of a carnal, insatiable desire for power. Her sculptural vocabulary, between the realms of machinery and viscera, inhabits an ambiguous, eclectic environment, free of inhibitions yet entirely cognizant of the unspoken boundaries at play.
Mire Lee lives and works between Seoul, South Korea and Amsterdam, Netherlands. She has earned a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Sculpture (2012). Her recent solo exhibitions include Black Sun, at the New Museum, New York (2023); Carriers, Tina Kim Gallery, New York (2022), Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love at ZOLLAMTMMK, MMK Frankfurt (2022), and Carriers at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2020).
Lee’s work was also featured in several group exhibitions including the 11th Busan Biennale (2022), 59th International Venice Biennale (2022), 58th Carnegie International (2022), Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin (2021), Antenna Space, Shanghai (2020), the 15th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2019), Art Sonje, Seoul (2019), and the 12th Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project (2018). She was the recipient of the PONTOPREIS MMK 2022 prize, and was shortlisted for the Special Prize at the 2021 Future Generation Art Prize.
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Mire Lee: Black Sun
New Museum 29 Jun - 17 Sep 2023Mire Lee: Black Sun June 29 – September 17, 2023 New Museum Fourth Floor The New Museum will present the first American solo museum exhibition of the work of Mire...Learn More -
Is it morning for you yet? | The 58th Carnegie International
Mire Lee 24 Sep 2022 - 2 Apr 2023Is it morning for you yet?, the 58th Carnegie International, featuring Mire Lee and Pacita Abad, is on view at Carnegie Museum of Art from September 24, 2022 through April...Learn More -
Mire Lee
Carriers 15 Sep - 22 Oct 2022 -
Busan Biennale 2022
Mire Lee 3 Sep - 6 Nov 2022We, on the Rising Wave Busan Biennale 2022 September 3—November 6, 2022 Mire Lee's new site-specific work is on view at Yeongdo, an island imbued with the history of migration...Learn More -
As we lay dying
Kunstmuseum Den Haag 9 Jul - 27 Nov 2022'As a person falls asleep, or is dying, artist Mire Lee sees a sculpture emerge. “People are like ‘meat’ in that state. I find that endearing, potentially sad, but also...Learn More -
Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love
MMK Frankfurt 21 May - 4 Sep 2022Tubes, chains, and wires seem to resemble organic contraptions as they loop, glide, and snake around and into each other. These appliances are stiff or pliable when tension is applied,...Learn More -
Mire Lee
The Milk of Dreams: Venice Biennale 2022 23 Apr - 27 Nov 2022Tina Kim Gallery warmly congratulates Mire Lee on the opening of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Director & Chief Curator of High Line...Learn More -
Schinkel Pavillon
HR GIGER & MIRE LEE 18 Sep 2021The Schinkel Pavillon brings together the worlds of the late Swiss visionary HR Giger (1940-2014) and the South Korean artist Mire Lee (b. 1988), transforming into a site for an...Learn More -
Contamination at Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg
Mire Lee 27 Mar 2021Encounters, contact and coalition are processes of contamination. Distinct entities collide and change. A substance, being or community is tainted, corrupted or afflicted by something else. Purity is an illusion....Learn More -
Breathing Through Skin at Antenna Space, Shanghai
Mire Lee 7 Nov 2020Bringing together new and recent works—several of which have been especially conceived for this occasion—“Breathing Through Skin” highlights four artists and their critical invocations of monstrosity—the monster as constructed motif...Learn More -
Mire Lee, Carriers
Art Sonje Center 23 Jul - 13 Sep 2020In her sculpture and installation work, Mire Lee uses machinery that operates by simple principles, along with materials that can be felt with the hands. For an artist who regards...Learn More
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Frieze L.A. 2024: Highlights From the Fair
Women's Wear Daily March 3, 2024“We’re very excited to be in L.A.,” said art dealer and gallery owner Tina Kim, who’s based in New York. Known for introducing Asian artists...Learn More -
Inside Frieze Los Angeles, California's Hottest Art Fair
Maxim March 1, 2024Pioneering powerbroker Tina Kim is sharing an extensive array of works from her notably intellectual roster all weekend. Disparate artistic approaches harmonize on the common...Learn More -
Mire Lee Next Commissioned Artist For Tate’s Turbine Hall
FAD Magazine February 14, 2024Tate Modern and Hyundai Motor have announced that Mire Lee will create the next annual Hyundai Commission for Tate’s Turbine Hall. Mire Lee is known...Learn More -
Hyundai Motor and Tate Announce Mire Lee as Next Hyundai Commission Artist
HYUNDAI February 14, 2024SEOUL/LONDON, February 14, 2024 – Hyundai Motor Company and Tate Modern announced today that Mire Lee will create the next annual Hyundai Commission. Lee is...Learn More -
Mire Lee to create next Tate Modern Turbine Hall commission
ArtReview February 14, 2024Tate Modern and Hyundai Motor announce that Mire Lee will create the next annual Hyundai Commission. Lee, born in South Korea in 1988, lives and...Learn More -
Tate Modern Announces Mire Lee As Next Hyundai Commission Artist
Artlyst February 14, 2024Tate Modern, in collaboration with Hyundai Motor, announces Mire Lee as the creator of the next Hyundai Commission for the Turbine Hall. Known for her...Learn More -
Mire Lee to be next Hyundai Commission artist for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall
February 14, 2024Tate Modern and Hyundai Motor announce that Mire Lee will create the next annual Hyundai Commission. Mire Lee is known for her visceral sculptures which...Learn More -
Meet 8 Artists Who Broke Big in 2023—From Sculptor Mire Lee to Abstract Painter Rachel Jones
Artnet December 22, 2023Abstract painting has continued to dominate in 2023, with a host of emerging names making a sizable dent in the market with energetic works inspired...Learn More -
Second Winners of $25,000 Gold Art Prize for AAPI and Asian Diaspora Artists Named
ArtNews October 16, 2023The second round of winners of the Gold Art Prize , which awards an unrestricted $25,000 to five AAPI and Asian diaspora artists every other...Learn More -
5 Korean Female Artists Who Are Reimagining Textile Art
W Magazine October 3, 2023Over the last decade, every art fair seems to bring with it an increasing amount of fabric-based works. Frieze Seoul, whose second edition took place...Learn More -
Mire Lee in New York Dystopie der Selbstauflösung
Monopol September 14, 2023Die Künstlerin Mire Lee ist eine Meisterin des Unbehaglichen. In ihrer beklemmenden Installation im New Museum in New York huldigt sie der schwarzen Sonne ...Learn More -
Mire Lee “Black Sun” New Museum / New York
Flash Art September 14, 2023My lone star is dead — and my bespangled lute / Bears the black sun of Melancholia. — Gérard de Nerval, El Desdichado (The Disinherited)...Learn More -
The Sorrow and Desire of Abysmal Life Machines: An Interview With Mire Lee
ArtAsiaPacific September 1, 2023“Within depression, if my existence is on the verge of collapsing, its lack of meaning is not tragic—it appears obvious to me, glaring and inescapable....Learn More -
In Seoul, a Major Player Surveys the City’s Changing Scene Ahead of Frieze
ARTNews August 30, 2023In the 1990s, gallerist Tina Kim watched her mother’s business, Kukje Gallery, thrive. It would eventually set her on a path to become a major...Learn More -
Miyoung LEE’s Top Picks from Frieze Seoul Viewing Room 2023
Frieze August 30, 2023MIRE LEE Surface with many holes: concrete nets IV, 2022 Latex, burlap jute, pigmented silicone oil, and concrete 59.7 cm x 21.6 cm Presented by...Learn More -
Mire Lee
Sculpture August 29, 2023Stepping off the elevator to see “Black Sun,” an exhibition of new work by Mire Lee (on view through September 17, 2023), I found myself...Learn More -
See South Korean Rising Star Mire Lee’s Gutsy Debut of Squelching Kinetic Sculptures at the New Museum
Artnet August 4, 2023The South Korean artist Mire Lee has been made a name for herself in recent years due to her penchant for making audiences squirm. At...Learn More -
Ick Art: Why a Rising Generation of Female Sculptors Is Embracing Body Horror
Cultured August 2, 2023Imagine a meat locker or a mad scientist’s lair: that’s what the New Museum’s fourth floor looks like today. Plastic-lined scaffolding forms a dank, fetid...Learn More -
We Who Are Drawn To the Repulsive
ACK (artcritickorea) July 13, 2023 Learn More -
Mire Lee on the cannibalistic imagination
Artforum July 3, 2023Mire Lee’s monuments gush, gape, weep, and macerate. Drawing inspiration from body horror, hentai, scatology, and vorarephilia, the South Korean sculptor fabricates hyperbolically visceral forms...Learn More -
For Mire Lee, Rising Art Star, It All Comes Down to Guts
The New York Times June 23, 2023The Korean artist’s ingenious machine sculptures, coming to the New Museum, show things that “you don’t actually want to see,” a leading curator says. One...Learn More -
Mire Lee
BOMB Magazine June 20, 2023Mire Lee’s kinetic installations are noisy. They emit distinct smells. They drip and turn, resembling unwieldy bodies or disassembled body parts. They are not alive,...Learn More -
Mire Lee
ArtAsiaPacific January 1, 2023Mire Lee The abject—in particular the intersection of body horror and sexuality—is integral to Seoul-and-Amsterdam-based artist Mire Lee's exploration of the 21st-century human condition. Challenging...Learn More -
One Work: Mire Lee’s “Carriers”
Art in America November 7, 2022Many of Mire Lee’s sculptures, comprising silicone and other synthetic materials, evoke a mix of the primordial and the postindustrial. “Carriers,” her suite of works...Learn More -
Mire Lee's Tantalizing Installations Are Charged with Death and Desire
Artsy October 14, 2022Mire Lee creates carnivorous mechanical sculptures that evoke the vulnerability of the human body. Using clay, steel, pumps, hoses, blades, and motor power, Lee creates...Learn More -
Alone in a Dirty, Sacred Space
Hyperallergic September 27, 2022The first time you encounter Mire Lee’s artwork your mind might race toward an unsettling observation that eludes your memory, perhaps from William Burroughs’s Cities...Learn More -
8 Standout Artists at the 58th Carnegie International
Artsy September 27, 2022MIRE LEE Mire Lee’s works can only be regarded as anti-aesthetic. There is horror and gore, but also beauty, as well as technical skill—both in...Learn More -
Mire Lee’s Visceral Bodies
Ocula September 21, 2022In Conversation with Stephanie Bailey New York, 21 September 2022 Mire Lee's kinetic sculptures are defined by a visceral, body-horror intensity, where materials like silicon...Learn More -
Mire Lee's Deep-Rooted Romanticism
Frieze September 9, 2022by Mire Lee and Alvin Li in Features, Interview Alvin Li Before working with you, I had no idea how technically precise your work is....Learn More -
Post-Industrial Grotesque
ArtAsiaPacific September 9, 2022Mire Lee is an artist who frequently turns to industrial materials and machinery to mine for waste and unexpected byproducts. In her installations and sculptures,...Learn More -
Tina Kim Gallery Presents Mire Lee’s “Carriers”
ArtAsiaPacific September 8, 2022For her first solo exhibition with Tina Kim Gallery, Mire Lee presents “Carriers,” on view from September 15 to October 22, 2022. “Carriers” marks the...Learn More -
Christopher Lew’s Five Favourite Works from Frieze Viewing Room
Frieze August 31, 2022The Chief Artistic Director of the Horizon Art Foundation (Los Angeles) shares his top works from the Frieze Seoul 2022 edition. Mire Lee Eyes of...Learn More -
Frieze Debuts in Seoul, With Big-Name Galleries and a Hometown Spectacle
The New York Times August 30, 2022High-end art fairs have been giving themselves global brand extensions for years, and the latest one, Frieze Seoul, is among the more ambitious. Frieze —...Learn More -
Mire Lee
Korea JoongAng Daily April 21, 2022VENICE, Italy — Two female Korean artists who rebel against conventional thoughts through art, traveled to Italy to showcase their works at the 59th Venice...Learn More -
The 2022 Venice Biennale Finds Hope at the End of the World
Artsy April 21, 2022Within the exhibition, technology reminds viewers of the intensities of our bodies and the vulnerabilities of our flesh. Mire Lee ’s deeply unnerving kinetic sculpture...Learn More -
Mire Lee | 3 Artists to Watch at the 2022 Venice Biennale
L'OFFICIEL ART April 20, 2022Mire Lee’s sculptural installations are often unsightly and heavily material, most often reminiscent of intestines or dissected body parts that exude liquids that allude to...Learn More -
Mire Lee | The Milk of Dreams |Tour Cecilia Alemani’s Venice Biennale Exhibition, Coursing with Surrealist Energies and Abounding with Bodies
Artnews April 20, 2022Mire Lee Remember this name: the Korean artist Mire Lee, who works in Amsterdam, is displaying kinetic sculptures that suggest organs being tortured in a...Learn More -
Mire Lee | The Best Art in the 2022 Venice Biennale’s Main Show
Artnews April 20, 2022Mire Lee This is a Biennale where kink proliferates, from a Mariann Simnett installation involving S&M to a Zheng Bo video in which dancers attempt...Learn More -
Mire Lee
Artforum December 3, 2021THE ARTISTS’ ARTISTS Twenty-three artists reflect on 2021 To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select a...Learn More -
MIRE LEE ON SCULPTING BODY HORROR AND VORE
Art in America November 12, 2021Mire Lee’s silicone sculptures resemble life forms that defy easy classification. These works, which look a bit like innards, are often equipped with hidden motors...Learn More -
HR Giger & Mire Lee
e-flux September 16, 2021The Schinkel Pavillon brings together the worlds of the late Swiss visionary HR Giger (1940–2014) and the South Korean artist Mire Lee (b. 1988), transforming...Learn More -
Vorarephilia: Mire Lee
Mousse Magazine July 20, 2021ESSAYS Mousse 69 Vorarephilia: Mire Lee by Alvin Li I first encountered Korean artist Mire Lee via an Instagram story—a documentation of Andrea, Ophelia, at...Learn More -
Mire Lee
CURA.36 July 20, 2021Mire Lee’s promethean sculptures and installations instill a creeping transgressive horror. Twisted piles of rubber tubing, pools of silicate, and ventricular pumps gurn, and ejaculate....Learn More -
Mire Lee: Carriers
E-flux July 23, 2020Mire Lee: Carriers In her sculpture and installation work, Mire Lee uses machinery that operates by simple principles, along with materials that can be felt...Learn More