Being Idyll by the Tide

There are artists out there who are constantly reinventing themselves and their work, continuously flooring me with each new exhibition or body of their practice. And one of them is Mike Lee, whose second Seoul solo show recently opened at Jason Haam, giving me that fuzzy feeling of excitement as I looked at the preview.

For context, I came across Lee’s work about ten years ago, back when he was making pencil drawings as a side thing to his day job. It was right around that time that he first picked up oils and started experimenting w this new medium. Not long after, I had the honor of curating his 1st international solo, and from that moment on, I watched him define his voice and blossom as a painter. And after knowing his work so well for so long, I felt that each piece in this exhibition wow-ed me. Whether through the lightly painted, almost stained surfaces which remind me of his early graphite-on-paper works, or the way he blends the social observation of Seurat’s leisure scenes w his Asian American upbringing. The way he mixes technique, elegance, and personal angle has always felt uniquely current but classic.

Lee’s work has always had an extra-sharp, graphic, almost digital appearance, and I love how and where it shape-shifted in this body of work. That tightness does wonders for the AI-envisioned, idealized beauty and elegance of the protagonists and their lifestyle. Next, it's the color palette. For an artist who worked exclusively in greyscale for years, this subtle introduction of washed-off tones feels like a milestone moment. Feeling more like tinted b/w or sepia photos rather than full color images, this approach fits perfectly w the subject matter and the melancholy of the scenes. And finally, the brushwork and paint handling bring these qualities together. So much more fluid, using washed-off, semi-transparent paint, this aspect of the work adds tension and subdued fragility to the images. With the polished protagonists occasionally glitching, and their loosely outlined surroundings fading into the background, Lee's shoreline utopia gets disrupted by an evident sense of temporality. Hence, I guess, Idyll by the Tide. —Saša Bogojev