Scott&Jae Gallery of Beverly Hills is pleased to present Everyday Rituals, Lee Gilwoo’s first solo exhibition in the United States in over a decade. Lee GilWoo is a South Korea based collage artist and painter who burns incense on mulberry paper to create spectral images of daily life. Featuring seventeen artworks from the last decade, the majority of which are being exhibited outside of Korea for the very first time, Everyday Rituals explores the contrasts that have defined Lee’s practice and outlook over the years: that between creation and destruction; and between the solemn and the mundane. 

Lee’s practice is distinct in being simultaneously additive and reductive. He first assembles overlapping layers of Korean mulberry paper, ink wash, and cutouts of newspapers and prints, before overlaying a final “screen” in which the subject is rendered by burning a myriad of pinholes with sticks of incense. Although Lee’s singular practice is ritualistic and idiomatic—having been born from his personal experiences of burning incense as a form of prayer for his ill parents—his chosen subject matter tends to be drawn from familiar scenes of everyday life. This contrast between practice and subject as presented by the singed image challenges the viewer to re-encounter the quotidian and the mundane through literal apertures of transformative ritual.