SAMMY SEUNG-MIN LEE
Sammy Lee is an artist based in Denver, Colorado. Lee was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to Southern California at the age of sixteen. She studied fine art and media art at UCLA and architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Among her many accomplishments is a performative collaboration
with Yo-Yo Ma during the Bach project tour in 2018. Lee is recently a resident artist at Redline, serves as an ambassador for Asian Art at Denver Art Museum, and operates a contemporary art project and residency space, called Collective SML | k in Santa Fe Art District, Denver.
Lee's work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in collections at the Getty Research Institute, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Spencer Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and the Spanish National Library in Madrid.
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STATEMENT
"What use is three bushels of beads if none of them are threaded?"
As the sage Korean proverb suggests—value is in the reinvention, connection, and unification of the fragments. In the studio, this is my guide; I arrange chaotic piles of bits and pieces to realize a whole. Whether in installations or hand-made books, my work transforms and re-contextualizes familiar items into art objects that reflect my personal history. The creative process resembles my experience of (un)conforming to a new homeland; it calls for certain self-renewal while summoning and translating the past. As a first-generation immigrant who spent much of her youth in a nomadic state, I use found objects and memories as material to investigate a sense of home.
I keep my hands busy in water; soaking, squeezing, kneading, and pounding layers of papers. Preparing a paper-skin is a laborious and cathartic process; time and effort transform fragile and delicate sheets into a leather-like substrate that is resilient and tough, yet luminous. My paper-skins take the shape of objects, becoming a hollow representation of the original piece (bas-relief). Other times I wrap objects such as suitcases and discarded shop signs to create new three-dimensional artwork with creased textures and scar-like markings resulting from the weight of water that was once present.
Typically these works question socio-cultural issues surrounding a sense of belonging, home, the foreign body, cross-cultural psychology, and immigration. My installations and books are both interactive and relational; installations correspond to the body's range of movement as it explores and performs within the space. I want the viewer’s experience of my art to create new communal stories. The skin-like tactile quality and intimate hand-held scale of books emphasize the more introspective and private meanings.
SOLO AND TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2022 Taking Root, solo exhibition, Freyer-Newman Center Gallery, Denver Botanic Garden, CO
2021 Remind Me Tomorrow, solo exhibition, Emmanuel Art Gallery, Denver, CO
2020 Remind Me Tomorrow, solo installation, People's Building, Aurora, CO
2019 Saving Lions by Killing Them, Two-person exhibition, Odessa, Denver, CO
2018 Molding Memories, solo exhibition, Lakewood Cultural Center, Lakewood, CO
2017 Constructing Spatial Books, Solo artist's book exhibition, B-platform Gallery, Seoul, Korea
Intrinsic. Matter., Two-person exhibition, Japanese Friendship Garden, San Diego, CA
2014 Beat. Spread Out., solo exhibition, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS (past five years)
2021 ID, Please, Korean Cultural Center, Washington, D.C.
Armor, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO
Colorado Asians, Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, Loveland, CO
Unmasked: Artful Responses to The Pandemic, Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT
2020 COVID Masks by artists, Vicki Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, CO
The Walls Between Us, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO
Pink Progression, Arvada Center, Arvada, CO
Synesthetic Cyphers, Walker Fine Art, Denver, CO
2019 Turning Points, Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
The Fulfillment Center, Black Cube Nomadic Museum Headquarter, Englewood, CO
Invictus, Global Livingston Institute, Entusi, Uganda
Finding Place, Walker Fine Art, Denver, CO
Mirth Myth & Mystery, La Napoule Art Foundation Alumni Exhibition, Redline, Denver, CO
Now That I Have Your (un)divided Attention!, Redline, Denver, CO
2018 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, Scope art fair, Miami, FL
Wounds, Dar al-Kalima Gallery, Bethlehem, Palestine
Urban Aggregate, Georgia, Denver, CO
Liminal Space, DMZ Museum, DMZ, Korea
Made in Colorado, Emmanuel Gallery, Denver, CO
Art & Soul, Art Students League of Denver, Denver, CO
10x,10th Anniversary Retrospective Resident Artist Exhibition, RedLine, Denver, CO
2017 Time Zone Converter, Korean Cultural Center, Beijing, China
Complementary, Art Students League of Denver, Denver, CO
Integrated, Korean Cultural Center, Washington, D.C.
The Obscured Self, RedLine, Denver, CO
Built, 23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, OR
Nice Work If You Can Get It, RedLine, Denver, CO
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bainbridge Island, WA
Baylor University, Waco, TX
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, CA
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Chapman University, Orange, CA
Children’s Museum of Denver, Denver, CO
Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Getty Research Institutes, Los Angeles, CA
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN
Lafayette College, Easton, PA
Ottchil Art Museum, Tongyoung, S. Korea
Seoul Institute, Seoul, S. Korea
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
Spanish National Library, Madrid, Spain
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO
University of Denver, Denver, CO
University of Washington, Seattle, WA
University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2021 Denver Post, Exhibit review by Mark Rinaldi (June 7, 2021)
2020 Further Reading, Touch essay, by Gillian Silverman, Oxford University Press
2020 Goraeya Magazine, Rockscape suit by Jiyon Kim (February 2020 issue)
2017 The Korea Daily, Exhibition preview by Sooyeon Oh (November 9, 2017)
2014 Surface Design Journal, Summer (2014 issue)
2013 500 Handmade Books, volume 2, by Julie Chen, Lark - Sterling Publishing
2012 1,000 Artists' Books: Exploring the Book as Art by Sandra Salamony, Quarry Books
Guild of Book Workers Journal 2012, ISSN 0434-9245
ONLINE
Southwest Contemporary, studio visit by Joshua Ware (Jan 18, 2022)
Denver Art Review, exhibit review by Ashten Scheller (Oct 1, 2021)
Westword, exhibit review by Susan Froyd (June 17, 2021)
Denver Art Review, exhibit review by Olivia Kayang (June 4, 2021)
Art Spiel, interview by Etty Yaniv (May 26, 2021)
Voyager Denver, interview by Sarah Miller (February 16, 2021)
Denver Art Review, exhibit review by Danielle Cunningham (September 11,2020)
Westword, exhibit review by Michael Paglia (February 5, 2020)
303 Magazine, exhibit review by Cori Anderson (January 29, 2020)
Denver Art Review, exhibit review by Samantha Hunt-Durán (November 25,2019)
Westword, exhibit review by Michael Paglia (October 30,2019)
CPR News, exhibit preview by Stephanie Wolf (October 2, 2019)
Finding the Right Vessel, a conversation with Sammy Lee by Odessa (2018)
WRITING
2017 Korea Magazine, cover story (author), No Lost Art (July 2017 issue)