A.
[ Overview ]
Lee JungHyun
Artist
The shifting meanings of objects.
An exploration of time, memory, and what remains.
C.
[ Information ]
About
Lee JungHyun is a Korean-born, London-based artist whose practice explores impermanence, memory and our relationship with objects.
With a background in industrial design and more than a decade working across design and innovation, Lee approaches objects not simply as forms, but as relationships shaped by time, use and human behaviour. Her artistic practice emerged from a long-standing question: why do we continue to create more objects in a world already full of them?
Working primarily with soap and other time-sensitive materials, Lee creates sculptures designed to transform and eventually disappear. Through colour, scent, touch and gradual dissolution, her work examines how value might exist beyond permanence and ownership.
In 2025, her work BLURRED was selected for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, marking a pivotal shift from her design practice towards art.
Approach
Lee’s practice begins with a simple proposition: an object does not have to endure in order to have value.
Her works are conceived as evolving states rather than fixed objects. Scent fades, colour diffuses, boundaries blur and, when used, form itself gradually disappears. Time and environment are therefore not external forces acting upon the work, but active participants in its making.
This process forms the basis of what Lee calls One to Zero: the idea that an object can move from presence towards disappearance, and that disappearance itself can become a form of completion.
Rather than asking how an artwork might be preserved, Lee asks what may remain once its material presence is gone. Her work shifts attention from ownership to encounter, and from the permanence of an object to the memories, sensations and experiences formed around it.
At the centre of the practice is an ongoing question:
Can disappearance be a form of completion?
A.
[ Overview ]
Lee JungHyun
Artist
The shifting meanings of objects.
An exploration of time, memory, and what remains.
B.
[ Recent Work ]
C.
[ Information ]
About
Lee JungHyun is a Korean-born, London-based artist whose practice explores impermanence, memory and our relationship with objects.
With a background in industrial design and more than a decade working across design and innovation, Lee approaches objects not simply as forms, but as relationships shaped by time, use and human behaviour. Her artistic practice emerged from a long-standing question: why do we continue to create more objects in a world already full of them?
Working primarily with soap and other time-sensitive materials, Lee creates sculptures designed to transform and eventually disappear. Through colour, scent, touch and gradual dissolution, her work examines how value might exist beyond permanence and ownership.
In 2025, her work BLURRED was selected for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, marking a pivotal shift from her design practice towards art.
Approach
Lee’s practice begins with a simple proposition: an object does not have to endure in order to have value.
Her works are conceived as evolving states rather than fixed objects. Scent fades, colour diffuses, boundaries blur and, when used, form itself gradually disappears. Time and environment are therefore not external forces acting upon the work, but active participants in its making.
This process forms the basis of what Lee calls One to Zero: the idea that an object can move from presence towards disappearance, and that disappearance itself can become a form of completion.
Rather than asking how an artwork might be preserved, Lee asks what may remain once its material presence is gone. Her work shifts attention from ownership to encounter, and from the permanence of an object to the memories, sensations and experiences formed around it.
At the centre of the practice is an ongoing question:
Can disappearance be a form of completion?