Il Lee

Il Lee (; born 1952) is a South Korean-born American contemporary artist. He was born in South Korea and has been living in America since the mid-1970s. The New York Times has described Lee's ballpoint artwork as "deceptively casual; sweeping, rhythmical abstractions in blue."

Reviewing Il Lee's 2007 mid-career retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art, Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, "We might read in Lee's piece an echo of the ancient divisions of reality into heaven and earth, or light and darkness. But the seemingly automatic action of his hand, tempered by the hard boundary above and the thinning of marks below, asserts itself everywhere as something that outraces any intellectual agenda. A broad program seems to have guided the making of this piece, and most of the others on view. Consciousness of the working surface—how to divide it, how to apportion the weight of marking—appears uppermost. He leaves us to decide whether the apparent effects of light, mood and atmosphere arise more from his process or from our desire to see meaning in it."

Benjamin Gennocchio reviewed Il Lee's 2007 solo exhibition at the Queens Museum for The New York Times, noting the "unexpected suggestiveness" of Lee's artwork and describing the "simple, minimal forms" as "instinctively seductive."

In a review of Il Lee's 2010 solo exhibition at the Crow Collection in Dallas, Texas, D magazine's Lucia Simek reported that "calm and frenzy lay down together" in Lee's artwork, which "harness so much power, through such effort, so quietly."

Il Lee's 2024 solo exhibition "4 Paintings," presented at Art Projects International was critically examined in The New York Times. Art critic Max Lakin writes, "Il Lee’s monochrome pictures are a study in contrapuntal forces: reduction and expansion; flatness and tactility; constructing form while also dissolving it. Lee’s work, done mostly with just ballpoint pen on canvas, suggests paint where there’s none. Restriction like that can be useful, and these works’ nuanced, nearly imperceptible shifts in tone and texture elevate the lowly Bic to the lofty status of acrylics and oils…" 2024 Solo exhibition, Il Lee: 4 Paintings, Art Projects International, New York 2018 Solo exhibition, Il Lee: The 90s, Art Projects International, New York 2018 Group exhibition, La Collection BIC, CENTQUATRE-PARIS, Paris, France 2017 Solo exhibition, Suddenly a Knife: New Paintings by Il Lee, Art Projects International, New York 2016 Solo exhibition, Il Lee: New Paintings / 40 Years in New York, Art Projects International, New York 2016 Group exhibition, First Hand: Architects, Artists, and Designers from the L. J. Cella Collection, Palm Springs Art Museum, Calif. 2014: Group exhibition, Momentum: An Experiment in the Unexpected, San Jose Museum of Art, Calif. 2013: Group exhibition, Extreme Drawing – Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn. 2013 Group exhibition, The Moment for Ink, San Francisco State University Art Gallery, Calif. 2012 Solo exhibition, Il Lee and The Line of Duration, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, South Korea 2012 Group exhibition, 11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Ark. 2011: Group exhibition, Representation/Abstraction in Korean Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Two works by Il Lee featured along with works from the museum's permanent collection in a special installation; November, 2010 through March, 2011. 2003 Group exhibition, Marking: Drawings by Contemporary Artists from Korea, Korea Society, New York 1997 Solo exhibition, IL Lee: Line and Form, Drawings 1984-1996, Art Projects International, New York 1981 Group exhibition, Korean Drawing Now, Brooklyn Museum, New York

Collections Il Lee's artwork is represented in major museum and public collections. San Jose Museum of Art, Calif. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Palm Springs Art Museum, Calif. The Vilcek Foundation, New York Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, South Korea Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea Duksung Women's University, Seoul, South Korea Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea Hanlim Museum, Daejeon, South Korea Société Bic, Clichy, France