Hailing from Yeongju, artist Keunmin Lee (1982) is known for his paintings and drawings which not only tap into his personal experiences with hallucinations, but are also guided by instinctive gestures. Lee translates hallucinatory visions into visceral compositions characterised by rich red hues and meticulous brushwork. His paintings materialise enduring mental traces, as he engages in a cathartic process that turns the mind inside out. The forms he paints resemble magnified and abstracted fragments of flesh, muscle tissue, and veins, which seem to infuse each canvas with the heat, viscosity and pulsation of vital organs, thus eliciting a synaesthetic experience that approaches the sublime. In his first exhibition at Peres Projects gallery in Berlin, entitled Realizing Boundaries, a new body of work is presented. The thirteen oil paintings unfold tormented cartographies. Networks of nervous lines meander across organic shapes, charting circuitous routes that read as intricate maps of the mind.
