To See the World in Ballpoint Pen - IL LEE
August 10, 2007The New York Times
What makes this work, and others like it, so alluring is its unexpected suggestiveness. When Mr. Lee's drawings conjure before you a soft, densely inked snowflakelike blob with feathery edges, or a pattern that recalls a distant constellation, or foliage, or even… Read More 
IL Lee - Queens Museum of Art
August 07, 2007The New Yorker
“Il Lee.” Hundreds of thousands of disposable ballpoint pens have passed through the Korean-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s hands over the years, and he’s mastered his medium. He knows how the ink will warm to produce a free-flowing line; he’s learned how to build up… Read More
‘No Border’: Zheng Xuewu Solo Exhibition
August 01, 2007Time Out Beijing
Zheng Xuewu is one of the most casually innovative artists in China. His current solo effort includes three separate series. A mind-boggling installation titled... Read More
The Mountain’s Hold
August 01, 2007Living Art Magazine
The mountainous physicality of Japan, Korea and China provides some level of explanation. Living and breathing amongst such magnificent features would make it hard to rid the psyche of mountains, as a recent New York exhibition bore testament. Read More
Il Lee: Ballpoint Drawings - Queens Museum of Art
July 26, 2007Time Out New York
For the past several decades, the Korean-born artist has been fusing minimalist aesthetics and traditional Asian painting techniques into a series of sublime, black-and-blue abstractions. Most works... Read More
IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings at Queens Museum of Art
July 19, 2007artnet
Large-format blue and black ink drawings, including a 50-foot installation by the Korean-born, Brooklyn-based artist Read More
IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions at San Jose Museum of Art
July 07, 2007San Francisco Chronicle
I wish I had seen sooner the stirring show of abstractions by Korean-born New York artist Il Lee at the San Jose Museum of Art. It ends Sunday. More than 20 years ago Lee, now in his mid 50s, began working with one of the few marking tools underrepresented in… Read More
Whirls Enough And Time, IL LEE does wonders with a humble ballpoint pen
April 12, 2007metroactive.com
Artist IL Lee doesn't need sable-hair brushes and hand-ground pigments. The Korean-born artist, who has lived and worked in New York since 1977, chose another path in 1981, when he began to draw exclusively with the humble ballpoint pen—and not just any ballpoint, but… Read More
Beauty in Ballpoint: Distinctive Doodles by Il Lee
April 01, 2007San Jose Mercury News
Lee has played with lines like a composer noodling away on a piano. After more than 20 years of such playing, he has expanded to complex symphonies of powerful visual notes: "BL-060" (2005) is nearly room-sized, spreading across a 7-by-12-foot canvas. His lines shout… Read More
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 achieves tremendous power and a range of moods and “personalities.” At times it is… 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 Lee Sanders, owner of Art Projects International, a New York gallery. Her roster… 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 loosened by random curling lines. The results, which take on a performative aspect given… Read More
Gwenn Thomas at Yvon Lambert
December 01, 2006Art in America
A series of strikingly crisp photographs taken in 1974 by painter and photographer Gwenn Thomas for Avalanche (the short-lived art publication that exemplified the improvisational spirit of the 1970s avant-garde) was the summer offering at Yvon Lambert. Thomas's… 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 or canvas support. The ink becomes increasingly fluid with the heat of his hand as… 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 in particular are gaining rapidly in the New York art world. Galleries like Jack… 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 themes are developed with assuredness, while details are at once supporting arguments… 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 took to make it while the endless markings, both visible and scribbled over, trace and… Read More
Art in America Review - Richard Tsao
October 01, 2005Art in America
The surface of Tsao’s paintings are rich with water-based pigment, their skins variously eroded and elsewhere built up with marble dust and the matte medium he uses as a binder. As the medium extends the integrity of the pigment, he manipulates it to achieve substrata… 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 in art of singular complexity in which complicated abstract and figurative images,… 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 or photos produce trompe l'oeil effects that make viewers consider what it is they… 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 understated lyricism of classical Asian culture. 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. Flecks of pigment emerge like faint starts that at first glance register on one's retina… 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 book highlighting gallery works and events from 1993-2003. 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 rubber columns, ranging from 74 to 94 inches in height, on motorized scootboards. At the… 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 fluid, amorphous shapes was captivating and looked more like a beautiful painting… 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 energy. But around the edges, the line breaks away from the gravitational force that… 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 black and white compositions visualized a different approach from Kim's strong colors… 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 through the kaleidoscope of daily life, the affirmation of a coherent substrate is… Read More
