GALLERY IN

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Fine Arts at National University for Fine Arts - Städelschule, Frankfurt/M, Germany


Stillhalten der Kinnlade/ Gallery Huber-Nising, Frankfurt

Was hab zu tun ich mit dem Rest/ Goethe-Institute Rotterdam

Watching you watching me/ Ausstellungshalle1A, Frankfurt

If I were you/ Gallery Ssamzie gil, Seoul

Forgotten details knock on my door/ TakeOut Drawing, Seoul 

콩 나 물 (Beans Myself Things)/ GALLERY IN HQ, Seoul


Grant of Ministry for Arts & Science in the state of Hessen/ Germany

Goyang Studio Program of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA)

Lee Soon-joo (b. 1959) was born in Seoul and is currently based in South Korea.

She graduated from Hongik University in Seoul and the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. She has held solo exhibitions at various notable venues, including Gallery IN HQ (2026), ONE AND J. Gallery (2023), Obscura (2019), Space IKKI (2018), Seongbuk Museum of Art (2016), and Project Space Sarubia (2004).

Additionally, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions at major institutions and art spaces both at home and abroad, including ONE AND J. Gallery (2024, 2023, 2021), Seongbuk Museum of Art (2017), Total Museum of Contemporary Art (2015), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (2009), Arko Art Center (2006), Seoul Museum of Art (2005, 2004), and the Gwangju Biennale (2000).

Lee has also been an artist-in-residence at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Goyang Residency (2005–2006), Ssamzie Space (2001), and Art Omi in New York (1999). To this day, she continues to develop her own unique visual language, focusing primarily on painting and drawing.

In-Between Infiltration (Text by Kim Ha-yoon) Yi Soon-joo paints to articulate the precise moments where language hesitates.At first glance, the entities in her works touch upon the unsettling unfamiliarity within our inner selves. Yet, after taking a few breaths and gazing further, we encounter a world of resonance where they overlap and permeate one another without boundaries, safely giving rise to each other. They are transmissive bodies that pull, push, and blend into one another. A "body"—an ecosystem woven from the hybrid connections of animals, plants, objects, machines, and symbols—reveals itself. This "inclusive body," which leaves nothing marginalized, naturally guides us into a time and space that does not flow in a single direction.A tail growing out of an antique tiger-patterned porcelainA zero-gravity Noah's Ark

A chair and a small traditional table (soban) that have learned a secret

A Buddha with a semiconductor circuit implanted in his head, and a humanoid robot taking a single perilla leaf for a walk

Their expressions evoke the surreal representations found in the satirical and humorous iconography of Joseon folk paintings (Minhwa), as well as the hybrid creatures of Hieronymus Bosch. It is only when we lay down the exaggerated narratives of tragedy that the true, original state of humanity is revealed. Perhaps this is why the dépaysement (displacement) coexistence of the entities in her paintings brings a sense of relief rather than estrangement.

Her distinctive approach is also evident in how she manipulates her materials. Just as the entities in her works intertwine and meet, the artist applies, erases, cuts, and ages materials of differing natures over a vast span of time, creating a permeable epidermis (skin). This seems like the hidden traces of a clandestine process that allows the entities within the painting to form a mutually transmissive relationship with the outside world.

Art critic Jung Hyun once remarked that for Lee Soon-joo, "there seems to exist a kind of 'Artistic Metabolic Activity' that generates and expels the matter and energy used in artistic endeavors." As this suggests, the communion she establishes with the world through her life possesses a sense of fairy-tale wizardry

SOONJOO YI