featured artists
From Strata to the stars
Unearth the mysteries of the cosmos with Na Young Lee.
Na Young Lee came to London on instinct, as if riding the afterglow of a dream.
Art has always lit up Na Young Lee’s life, and the prospect of shining this inner light in new, unfamiliar settings has often exhilarated her. While language difficulties once stifled her ability to communicate with ease, art served as a bridge with which to narrow barriers of experience. It put the real London in the spotlight, illuminating a unique city where creativity, opportunity, and a distinct yet raw undercurrent of coexistence pass seamlessly through the fabric of everyday life.
The city’s rich infrastructure and passionate artistic support networks provided Na Young with a sense of hope, purpose, and inspiration. While studying at the University of the Arts London (UAL), she recalls being selected by a private bank to exhibit eight pieces of work. Seeing clients pause in front of her paintings and exchange interpretations was profoundly moving. In fact, a curator at the time shared with Na Young a recording of one such conversation, with viewers waxing lyrical about her use of colors and forms for almost thirty minutes. These observers became archaeologists, generating new narratives that lived on with great fluidity beyond even the artist’s wildest imagination.
Na Young’s approach to painting also resembles an excavation. Crossing temporal boundaries, she unearths the forces that shape our universe, reviving traces left in history and tapping the inexplicable energy that manifests upon the birth of stars and galaxies. While she leans toward scientific reasoning and facts, Na Young is equally drawn to life’s mysteries that ripple through time and space. She employs coarse fabric as her canvas, rubbing into the surface with her brush to uncover hidden marks, fossilized remnants, and residual forms of life. For her, layers of translucent glazes and natural materials echo organic processes, evoking movement, fragility, and the stories concealed beneath the strata of existence. Folds in fabric, gravitational drips, and liquid brushstrokes reflect a delicate negotiation between control and unpredictability, allowing chance gestures, patterns, and shapes to emerge without resistance.
Na Young’s recent body of work has been influenced by the science fiction of Bernard Werber, cosmology, mathematical speculation, and the mythologies of ancient civilizations such as Atlantis. She translates the mechanisms of cell division and evolutionary processes into visual form, summoning primordial vibes into the present sphere, and inviting viewers to contemplate the wonders that exist beyond the limits of empirical understanding.
