The New Museum will present the first American solo museum exhibition of the work of Mire Lee (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea; lives and works between Seoul and Amsterdam, Netherlands).
Mire Lee, Endless House: Holes and Drips, 2022. Multiple ceramic sculptures on a scaffold, lithium carbonate and iron oxide glaze liquid, pump, motor, and mixed media, 71 × 39 2/5 × 157 2/5 in. (180 × 100 × 400 cm). Installation view: “The Milk of Dreams,” 59th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale. Courtesy: the artist and Venice Biennale. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Fourth Floor Visit Us
Installed in the New Museum’s Fourth Floor gallery, this exhibition will debut a new site-specific installation featuring an architectural environment and kinetic sculpture. 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: tenderness, desire, abjection, anxiety, and revulsion, among other states. 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.
This exhibition is curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Senior Curator, and Madeline Weisburg, Curatorial Assistant.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the New Museum, including a conversation between the artist and Gary Carrion-Murayari as well as texts by Wong Binghao, Florentina Holzinger, and Madeline Weisburg.
