Keunmin Lee (b. 1982) has explored new possibilities in painting by translating the layered and ambivalent emotions of anxiety and solace, loss and recovery into a distinctive visual language. Taking as his point of departure the diagnosis and treatment of borderline personality disorder, Lee transforms the sensations he experienced during hallucinatory states into works that are at once creative and subversive. Organs, the digestive system, and blood are exposed across the canvas, released from normative constraints of the body and rendered with raw immediacy. Viewers encounter an intimate inner world that emerges vividly through overlapping planes of color, disjointed forms, and abstract signs. Lee studied painting at Seoul National University. Since his first exhibitions in Seoul (2009), he has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in major international cities including New York, Paris, Berlin, and Malmö. His solo exhibition And Then None Were Sick (2022) at Space K made a strong impression, resonating with audiences through its intensity and emotional depth. His works are held in collections such as Space K (Seoul, Korea), Colección Solo (Madrid, Spain), and Park Seo-Bo Foundation (Seoul, Korea).

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I was born in Yeongju in 1982 and studied Western painting at Seoul National University.

What decisively changed the direction of my work were two experiences: the hallucinations I had while hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for approximately two months in my early twenties, and the diagnosis I later received from a doctor. Together, these experiences led me to develop a more conscious approach to my artistic practice.

They also brought back a memory from further in the past. As a high school student, I read Edward Said’s Orientalism and felt a strong sense of dissonance at the way the West othered the East by shaping it into the image it desired. I came to recognize a connection between these two points.

In the process of being diagnosed, I saw not only my symptoms but also my innate temperament and everyday behavior reduced to diagnostic codes and data. This seemed to parallel the way society quantifies and standardizes people in the name of efficiency. I believe people have long since stopped questioning this processor even recognizing it.

Through repeatedly making and exhibiting paintings and drawings, I hope my work can serve as a signal, however small, prompting a sense of awareness in people who have been standardized and packaged by these systems.

What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?

Approximately twenty-five years ago, I was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. The process through which my hallucinations and other symptoms were recorded as data and eventually formed the basis of a medical diagnosis prompted me to consider how society treats human beings, and how people consume and exchange one another.

To maximize economic efficiency, society prunes individuals to suit particular purposes, standardizing them, converting them into data, and compressing them into customized forms. This process of defining a person generates a kind of gravitational pull, drawing prejudice and confirmation bias toward that definition. Social systems then further accelerate these problems in communication within human society.

By translating the hallucinations I experienced before receiving my diagnosis into artworks, I try to hold them at a point before they become symptoms and release them from the framework of diagnosis. This motivation has sustained my practice in painting and drawing for more than twenty years.

I am interested in the state of hallucination before it is identified as a medical “symptom” or framed as a socially defined “scene.” I consider what exists before an experience is named normal or abnormal, real or unreal.

The forms in my work that resemble flesh, skin, blood vessels, and internal organs are not depictions of specific bodies intended to convey anatomical information. They are closer to present-day reconstructions of the fragmented bodily forms I encountered in hallucinations, together with the sensations and memories that accompanied them.

Another important theme in my work is how boundaries—between the inside and outside of the body, the individual and society, and reality and hallucination—are constructed and broken down. Rather than reproducing my hallucinations literally, I try to translate sensations that are difficult to articulate in language into painterly structures.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

I do not believe that I need to continually seek new inspiration from outside myself. When I return to the same memory or revisit an earlier work after some time has passed, different forms and meanings often emerge that I was unable to see before. This is because memory is not fixed; it continues to change according to my present state.

Forms that arise by chance during the working process, as well as unresolved elements, can become starting points for the next work. A work does not simply end when it is completed; new questions and images emerge from within it. Although my drawings are independent works, they are organically connected to my paintings. I move back and forth between drawing and painting as modes of thought, and I sometimes photograph and layer details from earlier works to discover new compositions.

For me, the motivation to create therefore comes not from waiting for inspiration, but from continually pursuing something that keeps reproducing itself in my mind yet has not fully taken on a precise form.

Can you describe a recent project or artwork that you are particularly proud of?

Most recently, my solo exhibition Before It Becomes a Scene at PKM Gallery marked an important milestone for me. It presented twenty-three works in total, including paintings made since 2023 and a new series of drawings. Bringing together large-scale paintings nearly three meters high and small drawings allowed me to see, within a single space, how the structure of my work had evolved over the past several years. Although I had not consciously intended to bring about a particular change, viewers told me that they sensed a development and expansion in the work, especially through its use of color.

Before that, my 2025 solo exhibition When Hallucination Is No Longer a Symptom at Galerie Derouillon in Paris was also very important to me. Like Before It Becomes a Scene, its title contains the premise of a state that exists before it is defined by society.

Being able to use the words “symptom” and “scene” to formulate exhibition titles that probe the boundary at which othering occurs made both exhibitions particularly memorable to me.

What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to establish themselves?

I am still in the process of developing my own body of work, so I hesitate to offer advice. However, I believe it is important to understand for yourself why you continue making your work, even when there is no external response. Recognition and opportunities may arrive much later than expected, and at times it can feel as though nothing is happening for a very long time.

Rather than adapting yourself too quickly to prevailing trends or the demands of the market, I hope emerging artists will continue to pursue the personal questions they repeatedly ask of their own work.

It is also important to keep making, documenting, and preserving your work. Over time, your earlier work can become an important foundation for understanding what you are making in the present.

What projects are you currently working on, and what are your can we expect from you in the future?

I am currently participating in the group exhibition Under the Skin at MO.CO. Panacée in Montpellier, France. Later this year, I will present works with PKM Gallery at Frieze Seoul and Art Basel Miami Beach. I am also scheduled to participate in a specially curated group exhibition at Galerie Derouillon in Paris.

At the moment, I am putting the finishing touches on the work I will present at the upcoming Frieze Seoul.

Text and photo courtesy of Keunmin Lee and PKM Gallery

Website: https://www.pkmgallery.com/artists/keunmin-lee
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/painter_keunmin/