Timothy Hyunsoo Lee

The Traces series began in 2014, and was the first body of work Timothy Hyunsoo Lee created when he left the laboratory to be an artist in the studio. He called these works Traces because it's a double entendre that suggests his interest in investigating a part of his identity that is both ongoing and residual. The rendering of each "cell" underlies a formal investigation of his anxiety, both as a Korean and as an individual with chronic anxiety and nightmares. Timothy’s anxious self allows him to sit down for hours, even nights, meticulously painting thousands of dots without any foresight as to how the composition will turn out - his works are dictated by visceral reactions that he gets channeling his compulsions and tics into a visual language. Thus, he traces psychopathologies through a novel method of "mind mapping" in hopes of better understanding how he thinks and views the world.

Traces also refers to the notion of resides - something minute that is left behind in the passing of something greater. In spite of the artist’s paintings being made organically, without any premeditation on composition, the works inherently feel "Asian" even if that was not his intention. In revisiting his first body of work and creating a sequel to it almost five years later, it is curious that he has come back full circle towards producing the works that led to years of exploration in medium, concept and execution. The traces of his first works permeated these years of exploration – his legacy. And so he returns to it, filled with the same anxiety that he had when he first created the Traces series - that's how Timothy knows his intention in revisiting his own past is genuine.