Artists

Jeewi Lee

Press release

The Berlinische Galerie presents Jeewi Lee’s first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin in conjunction with the GASAG Art Prize 2026. For her serial paintings, sculptures, site-specific installations and interventions the artist draws on simple, seemingly worthless materials where traces of time and transience are inscribed as memories. These traces are the starting point for her artistic research, where materials analysis blends with aspects of Taoist philosophy and personal mythology to create a visual universe that is poetic and meditative. Under the title “Residual Memories” the recipient of the GASAG award makes use of sand, an apparently everyday material and yet one of global significance. Sand fuses minerals, rock, organic residues and, more recently, microplastics. It is found in concrete, glass, microchips and water filters and it forms the basis for our contemporary built environment, but its worldwide consumption as a resource has left it in increasingly short supply. About the artist Jeewi Lee (*1987 in Seoul, South Korea), whose origins are Korean and German, studied painting from 2008 until 2014 at the University of the Arts in Berlin and Hunter College in New York. Since 2015 her work has been shown at many exhibitions in Germany and abroad. She received the Villa Romana Prize in 2018, the Kunstpreis junger westen in 2021 and a Villa Aurora fellowship in 2025. Jeewi Lee lives and works in Berlin.