Yoora Lee

Episode 437 / Yoora Lee (b.1990) was born in South Korea and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She graduated with her M.F.A in Painting and Drawing from school of the Art institute of Chicago in 2020. Her paintings are filled with analogous color relationships and wavering horizontal marks that imagine an impressionism derived from video tape distortion. Lee’s brush strokes blur the picture like an analog TV glitch, undulating the image as though from an obsolete technology. The unreal color provokes a sense of fantasy, reminding people of brief moments when life felt like a movie or drama. Lee’s images evoke a nostalgia of the recent past, as grainy VHS grade images meet the retro mood. The power of nostalgia, both romantic and empty, manipulates the viewers’ minds and emotions through imperfect memories. Her work has been exhibited internationally including Los Angeles, New York and Italy.