Ji Young Lee

Before Conscious Thoughts, 2008

mixed media

48 x 48 inches

$2,500

C-lective Curator’s Cut:

Ji Young Lee’s Before Conscious Thoughts immerses us in the quiet, restorative world beneath the surface. Created with acrylic and marble dust, the work’s organic texture recalls coral formations and the intricate landscapes of the sea floor, inviting us to imagine both the vastness of a larger body of water and the intimacy of being fully submerged within it. Rich blues surround us like deep water, while rust and purple tones ground us in the earth below. Like water itself, this piece offers a place of reflection and renewal, reminding us of the beauty found in exploring both the world around us and the deeper parts of ourselves.

Ji Young Lee

We Love Ji. She is a Seoul-born multidisciplinary artist and author based in San Francisco, CA. Her work explores transformation, memory, migration, and the relationship between the human body and the natural world through abstract painting, drawing, printmaking, and narrative storytelling, often focusing on her coming-of-age journey in South Korea. Through both abstraction and narrative, her work seeks to bridge personal memory, cultural heritage, and universal experiences of change and belonging.

"Rather than imposing an image, I allow it to reveal itself over time. The process becomes an archaeology of light — an ongoing cycle of dissolution, negotiation, and transformation."

Ji has a daily ritual: entering the cold waters of the San Francisco Bay before dawn and emerging with the sunrise. That practice of dissolution and return has become the animating force of her work, translating the physical sensation of water into layered, luminous paintings that blur the boundaries between self and environment, body and landscape. Drawing on years of open water swimming and a deeply intuitive studio process, she approaches the canvas the way she moves through water — adding, erasing, and resurfacing.

Interviews in progress, please check back soon!