New York
Hyemin Lee’s recent show “White Shadow” filled both rooms of the Art Mora gallery in Chelsea. The large front room featured works from her “Plaster Bandages” series, which consists of relief sculptures made from plaster bandages arranged in rows. After breaking her arm, Lee was treated with a plaster covering, and she later decided to use the material as a means of building vividly textured surfaces. All white, circular or rectangular in shape, these works feel like a later version of Minimalism, albeit with a difference: some of the pieces approach embroidery in their arrangement of soft materials, while others are given a harder exterior—Lee’s plaster of Paris bandages, moistened with water during the construction process, harden to reflect a glossy sheen. In some ways, Lee has feminized the Minimalist tendency, but it feels as though the suggestion of women’s work is undertaken only to transcend assumptions of gender. By acknowledging the Minimalist impulse, Lee places her work in a tradition that she uses for her own purposes. …see the entire review in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
