South Korean artist Mire Lee (b. 1988), who today lives in Seoul and Amsterdam, has made an international name for herself in recent years with her sculptures and site-specific installations. She studied sculpture and media art at Seoul National University. Lee creates kinetic sculptures that function similarly to living organisms thanks to internal mechanisms: liquids flow, hoses pump and motors hum. Clay, steel, fabric, oil, silicone and latex are among her preferred materials. Lee’s exploration of intimacy, vulnerability and sexuality to a certain extent recalls Louise Bourgeois, but her works appear more brutal and often more repulsive. At the intersection of horror, technology, architecture, eroticism and pornography, her installations are a forum for disturbing sensual and emotional encounters.
This new work makes reference to the artist’s 2024 installation Open Wound, with which she transformed the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London into an industrial womb. The installation featured a huge, spinning turbine surrounded by membranes of fabric resembling skins.
Mire Lee is represented by the Tim Kim Gallery in New York and the Sprüth Magers Gallery in Berlin. She has exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2022), the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main (2022) and the New Museum, New York (2023), among others. Her works have been acquired by renowned institutions including LACMA in Los Angeles, SFMOMA in San Francisco and M+ in Hong Kong.
Construction mesh, methylcellulose
51.5 x 75 x 4.1 cm
Copyright: Tina Kim Gallery
Courtesy: Mire Lee and Tina Kim Gallery
Provenance: donated by the artist
