Current
8.4 – 21.4 2026
Yoora Lee:Not Yet Home
3-5 Swallow Street Project Space
Huxley-Parlour is delighted to announce Not Yet Home, an exhibition of new works in watercolour by South Korean artist Yoora Lee. Opening in April 2026 at the gallery’s Project Space, the exhibition is presented as part of Conduit – Huxley-Parlour’s curated programme of two-week solo exhibitions – and marks Lee’s first exhibition with the gallery.
Lee’s practice explores the interplay between memory and perception. The visual language of pre-internet media animates her earlier works, in which she constructed familiar scenes where time feels fluid yet compressed, shaped by a nostalgia for the transition between analogue and digital cultures. Working from secondary images, often captured from television or digital sources, her compositions are defined by analogous colour relationships and wavering horizontal brushstrokes that echo the distortions of 1990s technologies, recalling the flicker of VHS playback.
In Not Yet Home, Lee extends this approach through a new series of works on paper, shifting her focus towards the spaces she inhabits. More immediate than her oil paintings, each wash remains visible beneath the next, allowing the surface to accumulate its own history, overlapping much like analogue channels. The works unfold along two interwoven themes. The first emerges from shared domestic space, where the inclusion of a secondary presence subtly reconfigures familiar rooms, imbuing everyday objects – a chair, a shelf, a cup – with a new significance. The second traces childhood environments, from her grandmother’s house to aquariums and playgrounds. Revisited from a distance, these places carry a mixture of tenderness and estrangement, retained in her memory but no longer fully accessible.
Throughout, Lee’s figures remain an anchoring presence in her work, though deliberately understated and resistant to fixed identities or narratives. Sometimes now freed from the glow of the screen, they inhabit interiors that feel lived-in yet unsettled. Windows, mirrors, and thresholds create shifting spatial conditions between interior and exterior, past and present. As in the settings Lee’s figures inhabit, her subjects remain unresolved, reflecting in their gestures a sense of ennui and isolation. Lee’s works present a state of suspended animation, inviting the viewer to dwell within a hazy, undetermined sense of uncertainty.
The Studio
[HP] If you could choose one word to describe your work, what would it be. [YL] Drama
[HP] Where do you go to feel energised creatively. [YL] I don’t really go anywhere specific for creative inspiration. I find it very close to me. It comes from photos and videos I capture in daily life, images and ideas I encounter through media, or new collection patterns from fashion brands I love. Ideas tend to spring from the things I see and feel in my immediate surroundings
The Works
10
Yoora Lee
Grandma’s Chair
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Mom and Dad
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
The Blue Slide
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
63 Building Aquarium
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Not Yet Home
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Sunday Afternoon
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Shared Corners
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Floral Pillow
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Seesaw
2025
Watercolour on paper
Yoora Lee
Shared Floor
2025
Watercolour on paper
B. South Korea1990
Biography
Yoora Lee’s practice centres on the space between seeing and remembering, exploring how her memories have shaped perception over time. Drawing on the visual language of pre-internet media, her earlier works construct familiar scenes shaped by the transition between analogue and digital cultures, using analogous colour relationships and wavering horizontal brushstrokes that make reference to 1990s technology. More recently, she has drawn influence from her inhabited spaces, working in watercolour to create layered surfaces in which each mark remains visible. Her compositions unfold between shared domestic interiors and childhood environments recalled through fragmented memory. Figures remain central yet understated, occupying spaces that feel both intimate and unsettled.
Lee was born in South Korea in 1990. She earned a BFA in Painting from Gachon University in 2015 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. She was a finalist for the Hopper Prize (2020) and nominated for both the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship (2020) and the Municipal Art League Award (2020). Lee’s work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations including Shadow Etched in Stone at Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024), Anemone at Another Place, New York (2022), and BURN IN at Jude Gallery, Chicago (2021). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at Shin Haus, New York (2021); K11 Musea, Hong Kong (2022); and Half Gallery, Los Angeles (2022) among others. Lee currently lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.
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Yoora Lee:Not Yet Home
8.4 - 21.4.2026
Current
Hours
Monday to Friday, 10:00am - 5:30pm
Gallery
3-5 Swallow Street, Project Space
London
W1B 4DE