OKNP Seoul hosts Echo of the Breeze, a solo exhibition by Lee Chae, from May 16 to June 16, 2025. The exhibition showcases a series of paintings that delicately trace Lee’s seeds of emotions blooming into “blue flowers” and meeting the breeze to weave textures of relationships. Lee captures the evanescent moments when emotions — unseeable entities — briefly bloom into existence, and employs sculptural language to express how they tremble and expand within relationships.

Facing the emotions in his heart and examining them slowly and delicately, Lee carried on with his studio practice. After lengthy contemplation and introspection, those emotions — deeply rooted and condensed like seeds — eventually blossomed into “blue flowers.” These blue flowers then grew into trees, formed forests, and at last, met the breeze. However, his studio practice is not just a metaphor for growth processes in nature. It also symbolically charts how emotions evolve: beginning as entities within the mind, making contact with the external world, and finally, manifesting themselves through relationships with others.

The “breeze” is the medium that leads this process outward and also the fuel that agitates and surfaces emotions. The breeze is invisible to the eye, but it is nonetheless a force that sets existences — like flowers and branches — in motion. Lee focused on this subtle energy and named it baramkkot  [“breeze flower” in Korean]. Baramkkot symbolizes the fleeting energy that lingers just before the wind rises, the oscillation of one emotion and another, and the moment when beings truly connect. There are moments when an emotion blooms into a relationship, and these were what Lee sought to capture on his canvases.

He realizes the flow of these emotions through the materialities of oil paint. Paint built up and removed in thin layers, the grain of repeated brushstrokes, blurred traces, and negative spaces are all remnants of his emotion’s movements. The various mark-makings Lee leaves on his canvases are not only the traces of the passing breeze but also the evidence of the oscillations left by fleeting emotions. Lee’s brush becomes a breeze that pushes paint around the canvas, and upon it, baramkkots bloom once more. These moments transcend the realm of painterly technique and operate as a sculptural language resonant with the essence of memory, time, and emotion.

The exhibition Echo of the Breeze presents traces of Lee’s honest confrontation with his emotions and visualizes how an oscillating emotion transitions into a relationship. Lee says, “Even the subtlest blow of a breeze can set emotions aflame.” We mostly miss out on such minute tremors in our lives, but the breeze is ever-present; in fact, it is the conduit that carries one person’s emotions to another. Baramkkot can manifest as a sudden, unexpected feeling or as an oscillation born of silence, drawing people together and reminding them of the presence of their emotions.

Echo of the Breeze traces the emergence and evolution of emotions, as well as the trajectories of the relationships they ignite. The breeze rising from the tip of Lee’s brush sends delicate ripples through the viewer’s mind and sows seeds of emotion. The exhibition provides a space for the feelings we have always kept to ourselves to reach one another’s hearts, offering a silent yet profound resonance.