Timothy Hyunsoo Lee

Timothy Hyunsoo Lee (b.1990) is an artist born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in New York City, and currently lives and works between New York and Madrid, Spain. He was educated at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT, USA) with a degree in neuroscience, drawing, and developmental biology.

As a first-generation immigrant in the United States, Timothy was uprooted from Seoul and transplanted into New York, where he developed a lasting anxiety attempting to reconcile his perceived and received identities – both culturally and racially. Trained in the laboratory sciences with a focus on behavioral neurobiology, Timothy approaches his art through an analytic lens yet his practice results in abstract conversations about transient lives and ephemeral states of being. As a result, his current body of work covers many themes – of racial politics, of migration, of death and legacy, and of sexuality.

His practice is rooted in an investigation into the rituals we adopt in confronting childhood traumas, and he uses his personal experiences as vectors for a universal narrative on physical, spiritual, and emotional loss. Timothy responds to objects or environments of his childhood obsessions and often uses repetition as a method of navigating the anxiety he developed from the immigration process – a pivotal point in his life when he felt he lost a part of his identity. He is interested in the religious and spiritual significance of counting, which is executed across paintings, sculptures, installations, and textiles, and through the action create what he calls “structures of salvation” in their passing – a nod to his upbringing in a clerical family. From manic drawings and text-based works, to soft sculptures and delicate watercolor paintings, Timothy imbues the materials of his labor with existential concern, and his works highlight the gestures of the past, the forming of legacy, and the salvation of (his) identity

Timothy’s works have been included in significant national and international exhibitions at venues such as the Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC, USA), The Wallach Gallery of Columbia University (New York), The Studio Museum (New York), The National YoungArts Foundation Gallery (Miami, FL) and in solo presentations at the 2018 Armory Show (New York) and the 2018 India Art Fair (New Delhi). His works and his practice have been featured and reviewed in EL MUNDO, Le Quotidien de l'Art, GALERIE MAGAZINE, ARTSY, The Art Newspaper, VOGUE India, AESTHETICA Magazine and the Harvard Advocate. He was recently commissioned by the MTA Arts & Design to create a public art project for their Stewart Manor LIRR station in Garden City, New York. His works are included in private and public collections around the world, including Facebook (Seattle, WA, USA), The MTA Arts & Design (New York), The Cleveland Clinic (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York), The Basu Foundation for the Arts (Kolkata, India), and Foundation DOP (Caracas, Venezuela).

OCULUS VR. Facebook (Seattle, USA)

COLECCION D.O.P. Fundacion D.O.P. (Caracas, Venezuela; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain)

FUNDACION DOP. Caracas, Venezuela

MTA ARTS & DESIGN. The Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York (New York, USA)

THE SOCIETY AT MSKCC. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA)

IMAGO MUNDI COLLECTION.Supported by Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche(Treviso, Italy)

BASU FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS. Kolkata, India.

CLEVELAND CLINIC ABU DHABI. Abu Dhabi, UAE

TP CONTEMPORARY. London, UK

APT Institute, New York, USA.

The Society at MSKCC, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA.