Lee Eun-sil
Epidural Moment, 2025
Ink and color on paper
244 x 720 cm (4 panels)
Arario Gallery Seoul is proud to present PAGO, a powerful solo exhibition by Lee Eun-sil (b. 1983) that runs from December 17, 2025, to February 6, 2026.
This landmark showcase marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and represents the first time she has placed the profound and long-pondered theme of "childbirth" at the absolute center of her creative universe.
Building upon the foundations of traditional Oriental painting, Lee visually manifests the volatile points where individual desires collide with social norms to explore the primitive instincts suppressed within modern society.
The exhibition title, PAGO (meaning "wave height"), serves as a poignant metaphor for the turbulent peaks and valleys an individual encounters throughout life, featuring ten brand-new works across the first floor and basement level.
Simultaneously, the third and fourth floors offer a comprehensive retrospective of Lee’s journey from 2007 to 2024, allowing visitors to trace her evolution from early psychological struggles against tradition to her recent focus on internal emotional vibrations.
For artist Lee Eun-sil, bringing the experience of her first childbirth to the canvas was a long-gestating mission that required years of objective distance to process such an intense life-altering shock.
Now, having allowed sufficient time to pass, she presents a multi-dimensional look at the physical, psychological, and social shifts triggered by this symbolic event through her masterfully layered ink techniques.
The colors of these retrospective scenes are paradoxically brilliant, evoking awe-inspiring yet threatening natural phenomena like erupting volcanoes, typhoons, and thick fogs that mirror the magnitude of birth.
To artist Lee, childbirth represents an act of simultaneous creation and rupture where a single body physically divides and the self is psychologically redistributed to accommodate a new life.
This process is portrayed as an ambiguous intersection of instinct and social practice, capturing a spectrum of emotions ranging from agony and despair to ecstasy and liberation.
By overlaying these intensely personal hallucinations and memories onto universal landscapes, she expands the narrative from the specific subject of "woman" to the broader concepts of "life" and "nature."
The centerpiece of the first floor, Epidural Moment (2025), is a massive 7.2-meter masterpiece that uses delicate ink and wash to depict a mountain range shrouded in mist and shimmering golden scales.
This work specifically captures the hallucinatory state induced by anesthesia during labor, symbolizing the profound physical and emotional numbing that occurs during the height of birth.
Other new works like Unstoppable Canyon (2025) and Crossroads of Life and Death (2025) equate the internal flow of blood to molten lava carving through a canyon, illustrating the fierce struggle of the maternal body.
In the piece titled War Clouds (2025), layers of deep blue pigment create a swirling vortex that acts as an ominous precursor to the waves of pain that define the birthing process.
Lee also utilizes extreme close-ups in works such as Struggle, Incision, and Trace (2025) to confront the physical aftermath of birth, including burst capillaries and surgical scars that are often hidden from public view.
By transforming these intimate bodily ruptures into metaphorical abstractions, she highlights the limits of the physical self and the overwhelming weight of maternal transition.
Lee Eun-sil has been a prominent figure in the Korean art scene since graduating university in south korea 2006, gaining early recognition through major exhibitions at the MMCA and the Leeum Museum of Art.
Eunsil Lee Stage 1 of Labor, 2025 Ink and color on paper 150 x 250 cm 59 1/8 x 98 1/2 inches Arario Gallery
Though she continued to work through two pregnancies, it was only around 2018 that she felt she had truly returned to her studio with the clarity needed to address these deep-seated themes.
Her storied career includes prestigious accolades such as the Excellence Prize at the 19th Songeun Art Award and solo exhibitions in international hubs like London and New York.
Today, her works are held in world-class collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Seoul Museum of Art, cementing her status as a vital contemporary voice.
Ultimately, her new works suggest that the pain of the individual can be transmuted into the grandeur of nature, offering a profound sense of resonance, recovery, and universal connection for all who witness them.
Eunsil Lee Upward Pressure of Responsibility, 2025 Color on paper 130 x 194 cm 51 1/4 x 76 1/2 inches Arario Gallery Request Pric
