Lee Hyun-sook

Lee Hyun-sook is a Korean glass artist. Trained as a sculptor at Hongik University and in Paris, she turned to glass in the late 1990s and has made it her material ever since — fusing and slumping panels in the kiln and drawing within them with crushed glass and copper wire. Trees, fields, light and the depth of cobalt-blue settle inside the glass.

Education

• 1991M.F.A., Université Paris 8, France
• 1989B.F.A., Université Paris 8, France
• 1982B.F.A. in Sculpture, Hongik University, Seoul

Statement

What I always wrestle with in glass is how to keep from being swallowed by the material’s beauty while pushing that beauty as far as it will go. I love glass, but I try not to lose to it. As I fit the pieces together, landscapes — sometimes whole cities — take shape in my mind; yet these are not descriptions of nature, but fragments of memory carried into the other world that is glass. I want the work to feel like glimpsing a secret new world held inside an egg. And yet my imagination is powerless before the fire. What happens inside the kiln is beyond my control, so I simply yield to the result. Because it never goes quite as planned, things I never intended appear — and that is the charm of this work.

Her recent solo exhibition Hidden Scenery (외딴풍경) was held at Choi Jung Ah Gallery in 2023, following solo shows at Gallery Won (2004, 2009) and art fairs in Seoul, Hong Kong and New Caledonia.

Artist’s note, 2025. Education and exhibitions from the artist’s CV.