Yuran Lee

Yuran Lee				Gallery II			December 1, 2007 - January 2, 2008

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	YURAN LEE – THE MAGIC OF THE EVERDAY Anyone who has visited Korea knows about the Korean respect for craftsmanship, and the delight Koreans feel in creating and using objects that are both simple and refined. This respect has also manifested itself in Korean painting, but usually in abstract work. Yuran Lee extends this exquisitely refined, subtly nuanced approach into the realm of figurative painting. Her work is flawlessly elegant, and yet it retains a respect for everyday happenings and everyday things. If one looks for a comparison in European art, an unexpected comparison suggests itself. The classic Modernist master whom she most resembles, in this new series of paintings, is Robert Delaunay. Delaunay was the most cosmopolitan artist of his time. He influenced the Russian avant-garde, and the Italian Futurists. His biggest impact, however, was on the German artists of the Blaue Reiter group, based in Munich. In a letter to August Macke, on the leading member of the group, Delaunay said: “Direct observation of the luminous essence of nature is for me indispensable. I do not necessarily mean observation with palette in hand, although I am not opposed to notations taken from nature itself. I do much of my work from nature, "before the subject," as it is commonly called. But what is of great importance to me is observation of the movement of colors.” This seems to fit Yuran Lee’s work so exactly that one feels a slight shiver in reading it. What is seductive about these paintings is their complete sense of ease. They never strain for effect, the color contrasts are never forced. They have an occasional touch of melancholy but at the same time they seem to radiate a sense of well-being. One of the problems faced by contemporary art, in the wake of artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Beuys, is that it isn’t transformative. What I mean by this is that artists often present us with inert objects, which are only transformed, if at all, by their context, and by the declaration that they are in fact to be thought of as art. Hence all those sniggering stories about cleaning ladies who, working uninstructed in some place where contemporary art is displayed, have thrown out some important piece of art with the rubbish. One never quite knows who is being mocked here – the ignorant cleaner or the artist. It is obvious that this could never happen with one of Yuran Lee’s works, not only because they are obviously paintings – things that most people would recognize as art, or as intended to be art – but because they lead the spectator into a world that he or she knows, but one that is demonstrably transformed. In other words, when we look at her paintings we go through a doorway and find ourselves inhabiting a sensibility that is much subtler and better tuned than our own. I believe one of the functions of the visual arts is to reveal the magic of the ordinary. Sir Ernst Gombrich, one of the greatest of 20th century art historians, one cited Chardin’s famous painting of a vase of flowers in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh as an example of “what only paint can do.” I think one can apply the same phrase to these pictures.