Lehmann Maupin is happy to current Breath, Island, a solo exhibition of latest work by South Korean artist Guimi You. Impressed by her latest solitary two-week journey to Korea’s Jeju Island, the works on this exhibition hint each the contours of the island’s volcanic terrain and the artist’s personal inside landscapes. Via delicate, atmospheric brushwork and a sensibility rooted in East Asian portray traditions, You transforms Jeju’s flower-filled hillsides, lush botanic gardens, and quiet visitor homes into intimate areas of reflection and self-discovery. Breath, Island follows You’s inclusion in various latest institutional exhibitions, together with these on the Nationwide Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Columbus Museum of Artwork in Ohio, and the Institute of Modern Artwork in Miami, Florida.
Jeju Island, usually described as Korea’s island of wind, stone, and girls, holds a novel place in Korean cultural collective reminiscence as each a pure sanctuary and nostalgic retreat. For You, its landscapes are each topic and mirror. Wandering its oreum (volcanic hills), resting beside ponds framed by blooming magnolia, or watching waterfalls carve their paths by way of black basalt, You allowed the rhythms of the island to form her personal: breath following panorama, portray following breath. Over time, her consciousness surpassed the setting, reaching into the very expertise of being alive.
Initially skilled in East Asian portray, You’s understanding of East Asian pictorial traditions— the place portray will not be an act of depiction, however of evocation—anchors her method. Her mark-making remembers the layered transparency of ink washes and the restrained concord of conventional Korean landscapes, harking back to works like Jeong Seon’s Inwangjesaekdo, which seize not solely kind however ambiance. Brushstrokes hover like mist, but settle like reminiscence.
On the similar time, You’s years spent in the UK and United States imbued her apply with the materiality of oil portray and the structural dynamics of Western modern artwork. Her works exist between Japanese and Western legacies, and she or he approaches them by way of a lens of synthesis relatively than negotiation. In her work, oil behaves like ink, and types emerge with the lightness of thought. In balancing these disparate traditions, You’s work enter private terrain—an area the place East and West, previous and current, panorama and self gently coalesce.
In Breath, Island, the act of portray is each report and refuge. Works similar to Noble Silence (2025) depict the inside of the artist’s picket visitor home: a silent house that holds the sacred stillness of inventive solitude. Elsewhere, Relaxation (2025) captures figures lingering in a backyard on the foot of Mt. Halla; right here, human presence dissolves into panorama. In Pause (2025), a easy view of bonsai framed by a greenhouse window turns into a meditation on development and restraint. Throughout the exhibition, traces of the artist herself—urged silhouettes, private objects, a determine mid-sketch—weave quietly all through the scenes
Breath, Island is much less a chronicle of Jeju than a portrait of a painter in the hunt for equilibrium. For You, portray will not be a vacation spot, however a passage: a approach of translating identification into picture and holding two worlds, East and West, throughout the similar body. On this sense, her work perform as islands themselves—floating areas the place the recollections of 1 place and the teachings of one other can meet, pause, and breathe.
