REVIEW: SOO HYUN LEE AT SOTHU GALLERY
TEXT BY ana escoto
Soo Hyun Lee, daphne, 2021. 53 x 45.5 cm, watercolour on aygo coated silk. Image credit to Sabina Bösch, 2025.
The tension of speaking about violence inflicted upon women within the context of an exhibition room full of people who might not necessarily empathise or relate is one that can fill the space with an aura of animosity. The artist may be seen as aggressive or inappropriate. Perhaps too radical to be shown in a gallery. Too personal to bring their issues into the surrounding conversations. Soo, aware of this latent issue, takes control of the conversation by, as my mother would say, grabbing the bull by its horns and guiding it to the water.
She opens her first solo show with a piece called Dare You, whose central figure is a defiant eye staring at the crowd, literally asking them to react. Her practice has recently been informed by what other audiences have said before: that her art is that of a “radical feminist.” Even in relation to her more abstract pieces, Korean audiences have responded with visceral rejection.
Dare You, 2025. 70 x 50 cm, pencil, watercolour on korean mulberry paper (hanji), mounted on wood board. Image credit to Sabina Bösch, 2025.
She now actively provokes. This process is much more thought-through than it might seem. Her new pieces are not just a case of “so you felt uncomfortable before, I’ll make you way more uncomfortable now.” Rather, her work now emerges from an internal metamorphosis she has achieved in recent years. I use the metaphor deliberately because the artist quite literally went through a period resembling cocooning. Some of the subjects and characters that appear in her 2025 works are creatures that have remained in hibernation since 2021. Sometimes angels, other times weeping women, her creatures are defiant beings that have conquered grave internal battles. They are, in more ways than one, independent presences inhabiting the artist’s soul.
Daphne, 2025. 24.2 x 18.5 cm, watercolour, mineral pigment on cotton paper, mounted on wood board. Image credit to Sabina Bösch, 2025.
Soo has grown not only technically as an artist but also, perhaps more beautifully, as a person. When we spoke about her show—me in my new apartment in Switzerland and her in her flat in London— she said: “I can’t abandon my body, but I can change it. I can act like I’ll give you what you think I’ll give you, but then I’ll attack you.” This is the driving force of her newest work. You can actually see this evolution in real time inside sothu Gallery. She has become more confident in denouncing past violence and present attitudes that trouble her. There is a clear before and after in her characters, who have evolved alongside her.
daphne, 2021. 89.4 x 145.5 cm, oil on canvas Image credit to Sabina Bösch, 2025.
Daphne returns in a fuller form. She is less sharp around the edges and no longer appears malnourished. She is healthier, more vocal, and has even expanded herself onto the walls of the main exhibition room in a delicate pencil drawing that Soo completed the week before the opening.
Installation view of the wall drawing (and close-up of Daphne). Image courtesy of the author, 2025.
Eyes have now become a defining aspect of her work, more present than ever before. Some eyes belong to angelic creatures, light beings; others are as defiant as she is. As stated before, Dare You is quite straightforwardly a dare. Taking a Head is almost a cruel joke to its receiver, if you catch my drift. With the new year, new characters parallel to Daphne have emerged. The eyes were the first element drawn in the piece Taking a Head. This work feels different. The eyes are defiant, almost proud, but not fearful or hiding. Through this painting, you can perceive the metamorphosis the artist has undergone. “What if my body were a glass corset?” she asked herself. “I can’t abandon my body, but I can change it.” In Taking a Head, the subject persuades her partner to believe she will give him what he wants, an act of sexual service. She bites back, transforming the act not into someone else’s pleasure, but into the consequence of using a woman.
taking a head, 2025. 40 x 80 cm, watercolour, mineral pigment on cotton paper, mounted on wood board. First image courtesy of Sabina Bösch, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.
With titles like I wish my elbows had thick thorns to rip through his confident chest, we encounter a deservedly ruthless side of Soo and her inner world of women who have had enough. Yet there is still space for care, expressed through the radical softness that characterises her work. Consider Shadowkeeper, 2021, which at first appears to show an ominous, dark figure but is, in fact, a kind of angel, keeping shadows safe for those who need protection. Similarly, the angel eyes often recur, speaking in unspoken words. “I still care about you,” they seem to say, even in the silence of a broken relationship. I will always care.
i wish you the best, 2025, 33.5 x 24.2 cm, watercolour, mineral pigment, aygo coated silk. Image credit to Sabina Bösch, 2025.
Soo continues to confront harsh realities by turning the tables, no longer concerned with how her work might be received. You’re warmly invited to experience this beautiful show, staged in a treehouse-like gallery in the heart of Zürich — a space that also happens to be the gallerists’ apartment, adding an intimate layer of closeness to an already confessional exhibition.