Solo exhibition Black Sun by Mire Lee at the New Museum

Thu, Jun 29 - Sun, Sep 17  2023

New Museum - New York Consulate Region

The New Museum will present the first American solo museum exhibition of the work of Dutch-based artist Mire Lee. Read more here.

About the exhibition

Installed in the New Museum’s Fourth Floor gallery, “Mire Lee: Black Sun” will debut a new site-specific installation featuring an architectural environment, kinetic sculpture and fabric works. Composed of materials that include low-tech motors, pumping systems, steel rods, and PVC hoses filled with grease, glycerin, silicone, slip, and oil, Lee’s animatronic sculptures operate both like living organisms and biological machines. Drawing references from architecture, horror, pornography, and cybernetics, and evoking bodily functions and environmental decay, Lee offers a visceral means to describe properties that exist between the realms of the technological and the corporeal. Titled after Julia Kristeva’s 1987 book Black Sun—a study of depression and melancholia—Lee’s installation is led by concerns of space, atmosphere, and materials including fabric, steel, and clay to suggest emotional voids and psychological tensions. In the past year, Lee has had institutional solo exhibitions at MMK Frankfurt and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Netherlands, and has participated in major international exhibitions including the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the 58th Carnegie International, and Busan Biennial 2022.

About the artist

Mire Lee lives and works between Seoul, South Korea and Amsterdam, Netherlands. She has earned a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Sculpture (2012) and a graduate degree in media art (2013) at the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include Carriers at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2020), words were never enough, Lily Roberts, Paris (2020), Het is of de stenen spreken, Casco Art Institute, Utrecht (2019) and War is Won by Sentiment Not by Soldiers, Insa Art Space, Seoul (2014).