On September 9, I had the privilege of attending the preview of Mire Lee’s solo exhibition Faces at Sprüth Magers Los Angeles, with the rare opportunity of having the artist herself lead the tour. This was Lee’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, and the works presented here reveal an artist deeply attuned to material, space, and the body.
The show gathers sculptural forms that are neither wholly figurative nor purely abstract. Built from concrete, silicone, steel, fabric, and plaster, these pieces oscillate between the fragile and the grotesque, as though caught in a perpetual state of becoming. Moving through the exhibition, I felt immersed in environments that were simultaneously unsettling and magnetic—forms that seem to breathe, decay, or mutate before one’s eyes. In Los Angeles, the intimacy of the gallery heightens this visceral encounter, drawing the viewer into a dialogue with vulnerability and transformation.
Just a week earlier, I experienced Lee’s works in London, where several of her pieces—originally presented at Tate Modern—were on view at Sprüth Magers London. Encountering them there, I was struck by how her practice expands and contracts across different contexts: in London, her works carried the monumental echo of the Turbine Hall, grappling with architecture and scale; in Los Angeles, they felt closer to the body, more direct and tactile. Together, these experiences underscored her extraordinary ability to shift registers—between the massive and the intimate, the architectural and the corporeal—while maintaining a singular, unmistakable language.
For me, Mire Lee represents not only an artist of profound personal vision, but also an important voice within a broader constellation of Asian artists shaping global contemporary art. Her works insist on a different way of seeing—challenging fixed categories of East and West, organic and industrial, human and non-human.
As someone engaged with supporting Asian creativity through initiatives like ACFA, I find Lee’s trajectory both inspiring and affirming. Her work demonstrates the vitality and urgency of Asian artistic perspectives in today’s international art world, and I have no doubt that her influence will continue to grow.
