Mire Lee’s (b. 1988) works defy categorization, yet they are idiosyncratic, exuding energy that is entropic and full of polarizing, enticing and nauseating sentiments. Unsightly yet inexplicably sensational, 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.
Mire Lee (b. 1988), Carriers, 2020, Silicone, pvc hoses, peristaltic pump, pigmented glycerine, lasor-cut metal plates, used formworks and other mixed media, body height approx. 230cm, dimensions variable.
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) and a graduate degree in media art (2013) at the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include Carriers at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2020), words were never enough, Lily Roberts, Paris (2020), Het is of de stenen spreken, Casco Art Institute, Utrecht (2019) and War is Won by Sentiment Not by Soldiers, Insa Art Space, Seoul (2014).
Lee’s work was also featured in a number of group exhibitions including presentations at Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (2021), Het HEM, Zaandam (2021), Marwan, Amsterdam (2020), Antenna Space, Shanghai (2020), Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2019), 15 Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2019), Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project, Gwangju Civic Center, Gwangju (2018), Arko Art Center, Seoul (2017), and Seoul Museum of Arts, Seoul (2016). She took part in residencies at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (2018); Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA Nanji Residency) (2017), Cité internationale des arts, Paris (2015), and was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Future Generation Art Prize.
Mire Lee (b. 1988)
Surface with many holes: concrete nets IV, 2022
latex, burlap jute, pigmented silicone oil, concrete
23 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches
59.7 x 21.6 cm
Mire Lee (b. 1988)
Eyes of the Grapes, 2022
Concrete
19.69 x 19.69 x 31.5 inches
50 x 50 x 80 cm
Dimensions Variable
Mire Lee (b. 1988)
Surface with many holes: concrete nets I, 2022
latex, burlap jute, pigmented silicone oil, concrete
44 x 18 inches
111.8 x 45.7 cm
Mire Lee (b. 1988)
Faces, 2016
Single channel video fit to vertical screen
7 minutes, 6 seconds
Edition of 6
Mire Lee (b. 1988)
Endless House, 2021
Concrete, motor, peristaltic pump, silicone, pigmented silicone oil, glycerine, fabric, silicone foam and other mixed media
42.1 x 215.6 x 215.6 inches
106.9 x 547.6 x 547.6 cm
Is it morning for you yet?, the 58th Carnegie International, featuring Mire Lee, is on view at Carnegie Museum of Art from September 24, 2022 through April 2, 2023.
We, on the Rising Wave | Busan Biennale 2022
September 3—November 6, 2022
Lee presents a solo show of new ceramic-based work, as the winner of the Stokroos Ceramics Stipend.
Mire Lee recently opened her solo exhibition, Look, I'm a fountain of filth raving mad with love, at ZOLLAMTmmk, as the recipient of the PONTOPREIS MMK 2022.
The 59th International Art Exhibition
April 23 – November 27, 2022
The 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 exploration of the darkest aisles of the human body and psyche. This equally seductive and dystopian scenario is the first institutional exhibition of Giger’s work in Germany, as well as the first major presentation of Lee’s work here.
Encounters, 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. Phantasms of purity characterise the ventures of European Western modernity. They reside in, but aren’t limited to epistemological pursuits, the striving for stable categories, precise boundaries and clear-cut identities. These imaginaries tend to be centred on a rational, self-determined subject – all too often straight, white and male – who claims to embody the human in its purest form.
Bringing 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 in horror and the monstrous as an inherent wildness intrinsic to desire. Together, these works traverse a range of binaries, provoking an erotic and affective engagement with bodies in the world, beyond the trappings of monstrified difference.
The exhibition builds up an eerie tension with a concrete wall that blocks the sight of the main installation, before you are bombarded with “Carriers” — a kinetic installation that almost looks too grotesque to be called art.
Lee is a young artist born in 1988 who has been known to experiment with materiality and the idea of life.
Ayanna Dozier
Whatever else Mire Lee’s Carriers is about, it seems to me that has to do with sending you back into yourself, which is not necessarily a soothing place.
by John Yau
In Conversation with
Stephanie Bailey
New York, 21 September 2022
Alvin Li speaks with Mire Lee about emotion and affect in her sculptural works, and the influence of space, architecture and the macabre on her practice.
by Mire Lee and Alvin Li in Features, Interview
Two female Korean artists showcased at 59th Venice Biennale
The Best Art in the 2022 Venice Biennale’s Main Show, From Fragrant Sculptures to Kinky Body Horror
Tour Cecilia Alemani’s Venice Biennale Exhibition, Coursing with Surrealist Energies and Abounding with Bodies
The Frieze team selects the projects they are most looking forward to at the Giardini’s Central Pavilion and the Arsenale.
Tina Kim Gallery Congratulates Mire Lee on her inclusion in La Biennale di Venezia 2022
April 23 - November 27, 2022
To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select a single exhibition or event that most memorably caught their attention in 2021.
