Il Lee

Il Lee (Korean: 이일) is a Korean-born American contemporary artist.

Il Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1952.

His family originates from the mountains of North Korea, who made their way to South Korea in the years prior to the Korean war.

His father studied architecture and engineering, but was unable to pursue it due to the outbreak of war.

Lee has five siblings, and describes his family as "big" for his generation.

He was born in South Korea and has been living in America since the mid-1970s.

Il Lee is best known for his ballpoint pen artwork; large-scale abstract imagery on paper and canvas.

He also creates artwork in a similar vein utilizing acrylic and oil paint on canvas.

Exhibitions of Il Lee's artwork have been held in Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, New Delhi, Mexico City, and numerous cities across the United States.

The New York Times has described Lee's ballpoint artwork as "deceptively casual; sweeping, rhythmical abstractions in blue."

His paintings during the late-1970s were oil on canvas, presented as "geometric abstraction."

The artist himself later described some of those works as "labor-intensive."

Lee received his B.F.A. (painting) in 1976 from Hongik University, a Korean school said to be "Western oriented."

Lee began working with ballpoint pens during his time at Pratt in the early 1980s.

He studied etching as his minor at Pratt, and the sharp needles became a preferred tool.

The sharpness of its line interested him enough to continue pursuing it through other avenues.

Lee participated in the group exhibition "Korean Drawing" at the Brooklyn Museum in 1981, introducing his ballpoint drawings.

Those earlier works were all drawn on paper, but Lee soon began to work on large, primed canvases.

The artist spends weeks, sometimes months, applying layer upon layer of ink to each artwork.

Linework is built-up through a "scribbling" technique reliant upon the "speed, spin, and angle" of his pen in repetitive motions, sometimes becoming so dense that the line-work becomes a flat field of ink.

The thicker layers can appear coagulated on the surface of the paper or canvas, with the dried ballpoint ink giving off a shiny purplish-blue hue.

When working with paint on canvas Lee utilizes empty pen casings and other tools such as bamboo sticks, scribbling in the same gestural manner onto a wet surface layer to reveal colors underneath — an inversion of his ballpoint method.

Il Lee's artwork is categorized by some as minimalist in content, but has also been described as "deceptively casual," with more work going into each piece than immediately apparent.

The repetitive quality of Lee's swirly strokes has been likened to effects associated with the common spirograph.

Comparisons to geographic features are also common, setting Lee's abstractions apart from "merely decorative" counterparts.

Reviewers point out hints of mountain ranges evoking panoramic landscapes and rocks emerging from an imagined mist.

Undefined forms appearing in works such as MMC-081 have also been interpreted as organic overgrowth or vines.

Il Lee attaches no descriptive titles to his artwork.

Instead, the artist uses his own system of letters and numbers to catalogue his work.

Successive numberings such as SBK-089, SBK-0810, and SBK-0811 infer a sequence of related output.

Lee then moved to America; first to Los Angeles, then to New York, where he earned his M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in 1982.

His artwork went through natural changes upon arriving in New York — "because I was in New York," as he has reflected — adding he may have "wanted to wash away the processes of the past."

Lee remained in New York.

A pair of modestly-sized works on canvas from 2012 hint at a method to Lee's system of titles; paint combinations of white-over-red and white-over-blue are titled WR-1201 and WB-1201, respectively.

Dimensions of Lee's works on paper range from conventionally-sized up to impressively proportioned; some occupying a full wall.

Lee uses the largest paper available; rolls with a 60-inch width allow him to create lengthy artwork.

One of Il Lee's most "ambitious" ballpoint artworks measures 50-feet wide, and reportedly required over 400 pens during nearly three months of the artist's attention.

His paintings on canvas reach similar scale.

Lee has stated that producing small works can sometimes be "limiting," adding that producing larger works provides certain satisfaction.

Il Lee describes his creative process as "intuitive," a term he came to identify with during his time at Pratt.