IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions (text from catalogue)
February 27, 2007IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions
The expressive inky line remains, but Lee’s use of ballpoint pen gives his art a freshness and originality that satisfies the avant-garde craving for the new. In Lee’s hand, line… Read More 
China’s Hottest Export: Contemporary Art
December 04, 2006Barron's
"The contemporary art world is much less Eurocentric and much more interested in finding new ideas, even as artists are becoming more international in the work they produce," says Jung… Read More
IL Lee, Chun Kwang-Young and Lee Ufan: International Abstraction, Generational Trajectories
December 01, 2006Art AsiaPacific
Using the dark black and indigo inks of ballpoint pens, Il Lee builds up monumental form through repeated working over a particular space, with the edges of his images diffused and… Read More
IL Lee at Art Projects International
October 01, 2006Art in America
There is an almost palpable liquidity in the dense, indigo heart of Il Lee’s recent production. Using common ballpoint pens, he locates a point or describes an arc or line on his paper… Read More
Contemporary Asian Arts Week
July 01, 2006The Brooklyn Rail
Contemporary Asian Arts week, held since 2002, is dedicated to showcasing the best of Asian Art through a consortium of 28 participants. Though the week is pan-Asian, Chinese artists… Read More
Just what is it that makes Il Lee’s art so different, so appealing?
April 01, 2006Art in Culture
Lee's work can be approached from many directions. The inventiveness of the work suggests the avant-gardes of modernism while its refinement brings to mind a classical approach. Grand… Read More
IL LEE: Beyond the Minimal
April 01, 2006Art In Culture
Il Lee’s work also radiates a certain spirituality filtered through minimalist non-objectivity. In the pulse of its forms, it’s, chi perhaps, it seems to breathe with the breath it… Read More
Art in America Review - Richard Tsao
October 01, 2005Art in America
For this show he deployed what has become a signature series of small, contemplative paintings saturated with intense color. With their relative isolation and dramatic lighting, the… Read More
Review, Zheng Xuewu at API
September 14, 2005Art Asia Pacific
After achieving a surface of remarkable complexity, Zheng paints by hand his imagery, which usually occurs against a background of a single color. The combination of techniques results… Read More
Painters to Watch: Collage Education - Gwenn Thomas
April 03, 2005ARTnews
This artwork, which is called Flag (1993), as well as Thomas's subsequent works, is a clever confluence of painting's diametric modes: abstraction and realism. The shadows in the scans… Read More
Time Chapter: Chelsea - Jian-Jun Zhang
January 05, 2005Art AsiaPacific
Jian-Jun Zhang's exhibition Time Chapter at DTW Gallery (in collaboration with Art Projects International) is reviewed by Jonathan Goodman in the Winter (#43) issue of Art AsiaPacific.… Read More
IL Lee at Art Projects International
October 22, 2004Art AsiaPacific
A product of both Western and Asian cultures, Il Lee's remarkable series of ballpoint pen drawings quote both the theoretical and physical reductiveness of minimalism and the… Read More
Art AsiaPacific Review - Richard Tsao
September 01, 2004Art AsiaPacific
Each canvas presents a surface of densely encrusted color, comprised of dozens of layers of paint that evoke tectonic plates taking shape as they drift across a planet's surface.… Read More
Jean Shin in The New York Times
June 20, 2004The New York Times
To make the mural, Ms. Shin clipped out the seams, cuffs, collars, plackets and pockets from the garments that the curator collected for her. Then, as Ms. Shin explained during the… Read More
Art Projects International: Ten Years
June 01, 2004Art AsiaPacific
Art Projects International (API) commemorates ten years of dedication to contemporary art with their anniversary release of Art Projects International: Ten Years, a timeline formatted… Read More
Marking: Drawings by Contemporary Artists from Korea
March 01, 2004Art AsiaPacific
The exhibition Marking: Drawings by Contemporary Artists from Korea is reviewed in Art AsiaPacific. Read More
Zhang Jian-Jun at DiverseWorks
February 01, 2004Art in America
Zhang Jian-Jun, who divides his time between New York and his native Shanghai, showed two high-concept projects. The first, 2000 Years in Motion (2003), consists of three silicone… Read More
A Week of Surprises
January 05, 2004Asian Art News
At a group show at Art Projects International, the works of Korean artist Il Lee and Chinese artist Hilda Shen were of note. Lee's ballpoint pen drawing of a dense tangle of lines and… Read More
All about the Delicacy and Energy of the Line - IL Lee
November 23, 2003The New York Times
For pure linear intensity, IL Lee's drawings cannot be bettered. They demonstrate how pen and ink can be used to build complex forms that seem held together by some sort of adhesive… Read More
In-Hyung Kim & Jian-Jun Zhang at Art Projects International
October 01, 2003Art Asia Pacific
Despite the similarity in theme, the source of the show's dynamic lay in the subtle balancing of differences. Both artists worked with concepts of the organic, however Zhang's ascetic… Read More
Visual Experience Time And Cultural Form: Installations by Zhang Jian-Jun
December 01, 2002Chinese-Art.com
Zhang Jian-Jun's art is concerned with continuity of culture and of human values through time and space. In an era when there is such fascination with the superficial changes that flit… Read More
Kismet - Gwenn Thomas
November 01, 2002ARTnews
Gwenn Thomas's neo-retro pastel beauties also shimmered–pigments prints on canvas that pictured strips of ripped photographic paper and cut felt in abstractions paying homage to Lee… Read More
Pouran Jinchi
October 01, 2002Art in America
Many of her strokes are derived from Farsi letters and diacritical marks that push away from legibility and direct themselves toward organic abstraction... Read More
Gwenn Thomas at Art Projects International
October 01, 2002Art in America
For the 18 pieces in the show, including three C-prints of drawings, Thomas uses photography to highlight detail and tonal quality. Read More
Kismet, The Unexpected Connection - Gwenn Thomas
September 06, 2002The New York Times
…Gwenn Thomas's gridded collages of torn paper and scraps of felt. But her pictures turn out to be photographs of collages printed in slightly dim colors on canvas: virtual collages… Read More
Gwenn Thomas
June 01, 2002NY Arts Magazine
The Iris or Pigment prints invite the viewer to travel through a time tunnel of recent technologies. At the end of the tunnel, were light can be expected, Thomas's drawing or collage… Read More
In-Hyung Kim at Art Projects International
January 01, 2002Art in America
In-Hyung Kim’s art feels authentically Symbolist; its visionary power and refusal to yield specific meanings fulfill Mallarmé’s goal of allusiveness and musicality. Luminous veils of… Read More
Pouran Jinchi
October 01, 2001Art Asia Pacific
In a large untitled painting from 2000, inspired by a poem in Farsi, two groups of black calligraphic strokes rise up on the left and right sides of the painting, forming a U-shape as… Read More
Small Marks, Big Spaces The Paintings of Yeong Gill Kim
April 01, 1999Art Asia Pacific
Kim differentiates between our knowledge of art as a material medium and its ability to affect the imagination. He returns the work to the viewer, believing that the dialogue between… Read More
Art in America Review - Richard Tsao
March 01, 1999Art in America
Paint was poured, channeled, laid wet on wet, dried, scraped, blotted, bruised and flayed. The resulting surfaces are wrinkled, folded and torn; edges are uneven, with the paint… Read More