The portrait of the artist, Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
Gallery Hyundai inaugurates its new New York Project Space with a solo exhibition by artist Jin Han Lee, titled ‘Whispers’, on view from May 6 to June 7, 2025. Following the success of her 2024 solo exhibition in Seoul, Lee’s return to New York highlights her unique visual lexicon that transcends language through painting. Dividing her practice between Seoul and London, Lee captures deeply intimate yet untranslatable moments, expressing them through a poetic, painterly form that maps out the contours of dream and memory.
‘Whispers’ alludes to the artist’s gentle approach to layers of sensation, emotion, and recollection—echoes rendered visible in brushstrokes and compositions that unfold like reveries. The exhibition spans Lee’s early works rooted in specific episodes from her time in the UK, as well as recent pieces that prominently feature recurring motifs such as the sun and moon, flowers, trees, and feet. These elements form a surreal ecosystem of metaphors that steadily, yet silently, permeate the viewer’s sensorial perception.
Lee’s paintings explore the intangible imprints left by time, memory, and feeling. Her newest works engage with universal yet deeply personal emotional states—love, waiting, parting, and regret—articulated through natural imagery and gestural rhythm. In They are There (2025), positioned directly at the exhibition’s entrance, Lee evokes the ephemeral presence of vanished lovers hiding behind flowers or wind, suggesting blurred boundaries between presence and absence. Similarly, Midnight Blossom (2025) conjures flowers blooming in the invisible hours of night, while A Night of Waiting (2025) captures the lingering solitude of yearning under a sky brighter than daylight.
A Night of Waiting, 2025, Oil on linen, 180 × 200 cm, Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
In Pong Dang (2025), Lee isolates the fleeting moment a solid object meets water, rendering its subtle motion with delicate visual tension. Dancing Notes (2025) presents a musical landscape where plants sway like notes, interweaving in a collective choreography beyond reality’s veil. These works continue Lee’s visual investigation into the unseen dimensions of emotion, articulated through her distinct palette and dynamic brushwork.
Other works, such as The Real Place (2024) and Buds and Flowers for Two (2024) revisit her signature motifs, offering renewed variations. While earlier works expressed tenderness through shared touch, such as warmth between two feet, her latest compositions embrace floral and botanical imagery to convey a world teeming with the energy of life. Lee’s perspective invites viewers to look skyward, as if through the gaze of a single blade of grass, at a horizon where petals and celestial bodies exist side by side.
In ‘Whispers’, Jin Han Lee crafts an ambient, contemplative environment where silence becomes a language, and imagery serves as a bridge between inner experience and shared human feeling. The exhibition marks a significant chapter in the artist’s ongoing exploration of how painting can access the emotional textures of lived time, subtle, unspoken, and universal.
Sayart / Maria Kim, sayart2022@gmail.com
The portrait of the artist, Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
Gallery Hyundai inaugurates its new New York Project Space with a solo exhibition by artist Jin Han Lee, titled ‘Whispers’, on view from May 6 to June 7, 2025. Following the success of her 2024 solo exhibition in Seoul, Lee’s return to New York highlights her unique visual lexicon that transcends language through painting. Dividing her practice between Seoul and London, Lee captures deeply intimate yet untranslatable moments, expressing them through a poetic, painterly form that maps out the contours of dream and memory.
‘Whispers’ alludes to the artist’s gentle approach to layers of sensation, emotion, and recollection—echoes rendered visible in brushstrokes and compositions that unfold like reveries. The exhibition spans Lee’s early works rooted in specific episodes from her time in the UK, as well as recent pieces that prominently feature recurring motifs such as the sun and moon, flowers, trees, and feet. These elements form a surreal ecosystem of metaphors that steadily, yet silently, permeate the viewer’s sensorial perception.
Lee’s paintings explore the intangible imprints left by time, memory, and feeling. Her newest works engage with universal yet deeply personal emotional states—love, waiting, parting, and regret—articulated through natural imagery and gestural rhythm. In They are There (2025), positioned directly at the exhibition’s entrance, Lee evokes the ephemeral presence of vanished lovers hiding behind flowers or wind, suggesting blurred boundaries between presence and absence. Similarly, Midnight Blossom (2025) conjures flowers blooming in the invisible hours of night, while A Night of Waiting (2025) captures the lingering solitude of yearning under a sky brighter than daylight.
A Night of Waiting, 2025, Oil on linen, 180 × 200 cm, Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai
In Pong Dang (2025), Lee isolates the fleeting moment a solid object meets water, rendering its subtle motion with delicate visual tension. Dancing Notes (2025) presents a musical landscape where plants sway like notes, interweaving in a collective choreography beyond reality’s veil. These works continue Lee’s visual investigation into the unseen dimensions of emotion, articulated through her distinct palette and dynamic brushwork.
Other works, such as The Real Place (2024) and Buds and Flowers for Two (2024) revisit her signature motifs, offering renewed variations. While earlier works expressed tenderness through shared touch, such as warmth between two feet, her latest compositions embrace floral and botanical imagery to convey a world teeming with the energy of life. Lee’s perspective invites viewers to look skyward, as if through the gaze of a single blade of grass, at a horizon where petals and celestial bodies exist side by side.
In ‘Whispers’, Jin Han Lee crafts an ambient, contemplative environment where silence becomes a language, and imagery serves as a bridge between inner experience and shared human feeling. The exhibition marks a significant chapter in the artist’s ongoing exploration of how painting can access the emotional textures of lived time, subtle, unspoken, and universal.
