Mire Lee: Black Sun

The New Museum will present the first American solo museum exhibition of the work of Mire Lee (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea).

Installed in the New Museum’s Fourth Floor gallery, “Mire Lee: Black Sun” will debut a new site-specific installation featuring an architectural environment, kinetic sculpture and fabric works. 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. Titled after Julia Kristeva’s 1987 book Black Sun—a study of depression and melancholia—Lee’s installation is led by concerns of space, atmosphere, and materials including fabric, steel, and clay to suggest emotional voids and psychological tensions. 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.

“Mire Lee: Black Sun” 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, Kim Eon Hee, Florentina Holzinger, and Madeline Weisburg.