Agonising

Title: Agonising

Year: 2012

Medium: Painting

Material: Acrylic on Canvas

Size: 53x45.4cm

Signature: Back

Certificate: Provided by Gallery

Lee Kyong is an artist who meticulously explores the interplay between emotion and color.

crafting her expressive series, Drawings for Colors as Adjectives. Her process begins by selecting adjectives that convey psychological states, deliberately avoiding objects or specific entities. She records these emotions through a flow-of-consciousness approach, removing any feelings that have faded or dissipated over time.

On her board, Lee carefully blends and adjusts colors over days or even weeks until each hue matches the exact intensity of the emotion she wants to express. Her colors flow constantly between the conscious and subconscious, embodying the complex nature of emotion in visual form. Each drawing is marked at quarter-hour intervals, capturing not only her immediate feelings but also subtle shifts in her psychological state over time.

Since 2012, Lee has been revisiting the connection between language and color, searching for links between words and colors through her personal experiences. She limits herself to emotions she has personally encountered, aware that some profound words remain beyond her ability to fully define. This exploration inspired her series, Record of Undefined Colors, an ongoing attemptto go beyond the limitations of language.

In her most recent works, Lee captures the passage of time by revisiting word-color associations she established in the past. This approach allows her to document how her sensibilities and emotional perceptions have evolved, as she reinterprets familiar words with fresh, nuanced color expressions that reflect the transformations of her inner world.