Lee Bae was born in 1956 in Cheongdo, South Korea. In 1979, he founded the Fine Arts Department at the Hongik University Art College in Seoul. Since 1990, he has lived and worked between Paris and Seoul.


Lee Bae’s monochromatic practice is a formal and immersive quest into the abysses of blackness. Subtly blurring the lines between drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, he has shaped his abstract aesthetics across categories to grant the non-color tangible depth and intensity.
Until the mid-2000s, he worked exclusively with raw charcoal to create minimal and refined, mosaic-like assemblages of charred wooden shards or chunks on canvases, as well as larger sculptural arrangements of carbonized trunks. Obtained b...