For its third exhibition, Jacobs’ Booth proudly presents a new painting by Gowoon Lee. Part of the artist’s “Candle” series, this composition directly engages the sfumato technique, while referring to canonical paintings by Gerhard Richter, Peter Paul Rubens, and Godfried Schalcken.
Organized by New York-based curator and writer Reilly Davidson, and realized in collaboration with Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York, this focused presentation amplifies Lee’s ability to transform the familiar into something just beyond the point of legibility, offering a moment of repose within the charged space of the booth.
Gowoon Lee was born in South Korea, raised in Auckland, New Zealand, and is now based in Düsseldorf, Germany. Her work engages the instability of meaning, exploring the permutations of images as they move through and between different cultural and linguistic zones. In this respect, she signals toward the potential limitations of iconography. Lee’s paintings emerge from a process of cropping, zooming, and softening, where once-familiar figures—often drawn from American cartoons, television, and visual tropes—dissolve into something more ambiguous.