“Mango is a portrayal of human beings as aliens, transcending the physical body."
Space travel in pastel psychedelia
So Youn Lee’s gender-neutral protagonist, Mango, accompanied by Choco, a French bulldog sidekick, leads us on journeys through candy-coloured galaxies adorned with rainbow bubbles, eyeballs, and stars. But this is more than just a transcendent experience. Lee is inspired by her experience as an immigrant in the U.S. Her paintings are a metaphor for encounters of the self and strangers, and ordinary life as well as the hardships. Through Mango’s wide-eyed curiosity, Lee reinterprets these challenges as adventures worthy of exploration.
Lee's paintings immerse us in an alternate universe brimmin...
So Youn Lee’s gender-neutral protagonist, Mango, accompanied by Choco, a French bulldog sidekick, leads us on journeys through candy-coloured galaxies adorned with rainbow bubbles, eyeballs, and stars. But this is more than just a transcendent experience. Lee is inspired by her experience as an immigrant in the U.S. Her paintings are a metaphor for encounters of the self and strangers, and ordinary life as well as the hardships. Through Mango’s wide-eyed curiosity, Lee reinterprets these challenges as adventures worthy of exploration.
Lee's paintings immerse us in an alternate universe brimming with emotion. Drawing inspiration from her inner psyche, Lee fills her artist journals with ideas dealing with the themes of space and emotion. She transfers her favourite sketches onto large canvases and adds layer upon layer of oil paint. In fine brush strokes, she constructs a luminous pastel world free from the confines of both three-dimensional limitations and social stereotypes. In her technicolour universe, Lee shows disorderly and unconscious elements coexisting harmoniously. It stands for her vision of a world where different inhabitants can get along despite their differences – "a world of ambiguity, gentle chaos, and freedom—somewhere safe”
Bio
So Youn Lee (she/her) was born in 1984 in Busan, South Korea. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.
At auction
So Youn Lee's piece, Mother, was purchased for HK $125k (US $16k) at Christie's HK 2020 Modern & Contemporary Art sale, over the painting's HK $120k upper estimate.
Collaborations
In 2018 Lee designed a unique edition of trainers for Aldo's Mx3 Artist series. Her signature twist was the doodle patterns on the shoes that glowed in the dark.
