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Beloved: Those Who Were Loved "Who is your beloved?" Who has stayed in your heart the longest? In the solo exhibition Beloved: Those Who Were Loved, artist Lee Na-jin asks how those who are loved come to be remembered. In the paintings, young animals wearing ornate crowns and jewels gaze back at the viewer. The contrast between their innocent eyes and the heavy gold ornaments evokes both the weight of growing up and memories of childhood, telling a story about human life and time that goes beyond animal portraiture. The work began with the artist's experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake while living in Japan and the death of a mentor. Facing life and death, meeting and loss, led to reflection on passing time and the beings left behind within it. The crowns and accessories, drawn from the artist's childhood memories of England, give the young animals special meaning. They are the artist's own childhood, the childhood of the parents' generation, and also someone else growing up today. Time in the real world moves forward, but the time of memory keeps circling back. The young animals on the canvas never age, linking past and present and the timelines of different generations. Just as, in the work Thank You! Flowers and Wind That Raised Me!, flowers symbolize moments of joy and wind the times that carry away tears and pain, the artist suggests that every experience in life has shaped who the artist is today. The clear eyes of the young animals are both a longing for times gone by and a quiet comfort that affirms life. These reflections deepen through the artist's distinctive visual language. Since 2003, Lee has researched and developed a "squeezing technique," piping paint as if decorating a cake. Paint mixed from various materials is built up again and again to create delicate texture and depth, while colors and surfaces that shift with the direction of light expand the sensory possibilities of painting. The intricate detail, inspired by stitch-by-stitch embroidery, reflects a craftsman's approach of refining the work through repetition and accumulation. The richly decorative surfaces draw the eye first, but beneath them lie years of accumulated labor, memory and reflection on life. Just as the layers of paint add depth to the canvas, our lives take their present shape from layered times of joy and sorrow, meeting and parting. Beloved: Those Who Were Loved is a story about someone special and, at the same time, a story about all of us. Beings we loved, moments when we were loved, and faces that remain in our hearts as time passes: through the eyes of young animals, Lee leads viewers into their own memories and asks, who remains in your heart forever? Through this question, the exhibition invites visitors to look back on the lives they have lived and rediscover the flowers and wind that raised them, and the loved selves they were in those times. GALLERY We 25-17, Hosu-ro 52beon-gil, Suji-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do 031-266-3266 gallerywe@gallerywe.com www.gallerywe.com