SFUMATO

For its third exhibition, curated by Reilly Davidson and in collaboration with Meredith Rosen Gallery, Jacobs’ Booth proudly presents a new painting by Gowoon Lee.

Lee’s studio practice is one of concentrated rigor, often sequestering the completion of a painting to a single session. Her paintings spring forth in succession, a chain reaction of aesthetic impulses. When viewed together, a constellation of whims and signals takes shape. Her theoretical sleights of hand manifest in line with formal dogma, as Lee habitually works alongside representation while poking holes in its plot. The distillation of entire frames into tight crop is not only a method of control and deployment of abstraction, but also a device for further linguistic exploration. This mode becomes a framework for the artist to embed an understanding of the Korean language directly into her conceptual geography. Implicity and indirectness are hallmarks within this grammatical system and, as such, certain aspects of a sentence are either insinuated or omitted entirely. The potential of suggestion or elision thus remains at the fore of Lee’s project.

The exhibition’s title, “Sfumato,” is therefore self-evident. This process, which Lee regularly engages, has everything to do with light and, by manifesting that literally through subject, Lee expresses a double-knowing. This can even be tripled if one should consider the perpetually illuminated display: luminescence times three. Hence, form meets content meets context in this apex of painterly coordination.

- Exhibition text by
Reilly Davidson, May 2025

To learn more about this work and Jacobs’ Booth
CONTACT US

For its third exhibition, curated by Reilly Davidson and in collaboration with Meredith Rosen Gallery, Jacobs’ Booth proudly presents a new painting by Gowoon Lee.

Lee’s studio practice is one of concentrated rigor, often sequestering the completion of a painting to a single session. Her paintings spring forth in succession, a chain reaction of aesthetic impulses. When viewed together, a constellation of whims and signals takes shape. Her theoretical sleights of hand manifest in line with formal dogma, as Lee habitually works alongside representation while poking holes in its plot. The distillation of entire frames into tight crop is not only a method of control and deployment of abstraction, but also a device for further linguistic exploration. This mode becomes a framework for the artist to embed an understanding of the Korean language directly into her conceptual geography. Implicity and indirectness are hallmarks within this grammatical system and, as such, certain aspects of a sentence are either insinuated or omitted entirely. The potential of suggestion or elision thus remains at the fore of Lee’s project.

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According to art historian Marcia B. Hall, the sfumato mode is meant “to direct the eye to the significant elements and hence focus the narrative, rather than to create heightened drama." While chiaroscuro, unione, and cangiante each contribute to achievements in luminescent and formal qualities in painting, sfumato allows its technician to soften transitions between tonalities and transcend the limitations of human perception. Leonardo da Vinci pioneered this technique, toward the end of the fifteenth century, noting that it allowed for space “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke.”

The exhibition’s title, “Sfumato,” is therefore self-evident. This process, which Lee regularly engages, has everything to do with light and, by manifesting that literally through subject, Lee expresses a double-knowing. This can even be tripled if one should consider the perpetually illuminated display: luminescence times three. Hence, form meets content meets context in this apex of painterly coordination.

- Exhibition text by
Reilly Davidson, May 2025

To learn more about this work and Jacobs’ Booth
CONTACT US