Yoora Lee
Yoora Lee (b. 1990) is an artist based in Los Angeles. She received a BFA in Painting from Gachon University in 2015 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020.
Lee’s recent exhibitions include Shadow Etched in Stone, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024, solo); Lonely Crowd, Half Gallery, Los Angeles (2023, solo); Ripe, Harper's, Los Angeles (2023); DISEMBODIED curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim, New York (2023); Finding my missing half, T293 gallery, Rome (2022, solo); YOU ME ME YOU, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022); Anemone, Another Place, New York (2022, solo); Exodus, Gallery Ascend + K 11 Muse, Kowloon, Hong Kong (2022); Harmonious Arrangement, Half Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Burn In, Jude Gallery Chicago, Chicago (2021, solo); and many others.
Bony Ramirez
Craig Taylor
Dabin Ahn
Drew Dodge
Ina Jang
Ji Woo Kim
Jin Jeong
KangHee Kim
Sarah Lee
Shuyi Cao
Shyama Golden
Sophia Heymans
Yoora Lee
Yujie Li
Yuri Yuan
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My mom is my biggest supporter and has greatly influenced my career. She’s not a painter but she always loved art. During my childhood, she made French quilts, and her home was filled with antiques, vintage materials, and other art objects. Growing up in this environment naturally influenced me and my art–you can see it in the composition of my work and the focus on interior space in my paintings.
I started painting when I was around 10, and my mom was very passionate about sending me to art school. Korean art schools have a lot of exams. They train you in basic skills and techniques, so I was making a lot of realistic figure paintings, but also writing down ideas of what I wanted to paint. I wanted to study in America because I could pursue my ideas and develop my style of painting rather than focusing primarily on skill.
As a kid, I was deeply interested in nature and getting in touch with my inner self. When I started studying art history in America, I was especially drawn to the work of Caspar David Friedrich. He painted people staring out at vast landscapes. His work is overwhelming but embodies a strong sense of emptiness. I want my work to evoke a similar feeling of romanticism and longing. In my artistic practice, I began taking breaks from painting to explore national parks and travel. Being in nature allows me to reconnect with my inner self and draw out emotions that fuel my artistic practice.
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My paintings are influenced by pop culture and mass media. I watch a lot of TV dramas, especially K-dramas, and old films from the ‘80s and ‘90s. I’m interested in the way media is used to manipulate the viewer’s thoughts and emotions. I want my art to have a similar effect by drawing on the idea of imperfect memory and nostalgia to impact my audience’s thoughts and feelings.
I’m obsessed with Wes Anderson’s weird and unique film compositions. I crop and exaggerate body parts to achieve a similar effect. I don’t want to paint faces or facial expressions. My figures are usually looking up or away and their faces are obscured. I want my audience to see themselves in the figures I’m painting rather than seeing me or a specific person. Focusing on body parts, like hands, feet, and legs, allows my work to be more open-ended.
My paintings start with collecting images from films, TV, and even YouTube. I also take pictures of my body in different postures and positions, usually when I’m lying down, relaxing, or zoning out, as a reference for my figures. I mix and juxtapose all of these collected images, turning them into a composite. After that, I make fast color sketches to get an idea of what the finished piece will look like. When I’m satisfied with the sketches, I move on to painting.
I approach my paintings like a TV screen. I developed my particular pastel, cool-toned color palette from old video stills. When you look at photographs and films from the ‘80s and ‘90s, they often have visual imperfections and glitches, which produce a bluish color. I use similar colors and paint with horizontal brushstrokes to emulate that glitch effect in analog TV screens.
I use oil paints, but my process for painting is more similar to watercolor. I dilute and thin out my paints so they move like watercolor and I can build up the color layer by layer. I like the watercolor effect because it gives a certain transparency and ghostliness to my figures. It embodies missing someone and the feeling of their absence.
When I first came to the States for my MFA at SAIC, I was apart from my family and friends and I think that isolation affected the direction of my paintings. Even when I went home to Korea, I noticed how in crowds or celebrations, people were focused on their phones and their own digital spaces. I felt detached even when I was around people. Though my work is about my personal stories and relationships, I want the viewer to resonate with universal feelings of yearning, loneliness, uncertainty, or incomplete happiness. Feelings that everyone has experienced.
Gabrielle Luu is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY and the Editor-in-Chief of Civil Art.