Jr-Yun Lee + Makoto Yoshiura ＂Tracing Signs＂

Jr-Yun Lee 、 Makoto Yoshiura

Dec 6 - Dec 21, 2025

We are pleased to announce the exhibition Jr-Yun Lee + Makoto Yoshiura “Tracing Signs”, held at gallery Unfold and gallery Biga. Both artists primarily work with printmaking, yet they employ different materials and techniques, each developing a unique sense of time and approach. Through their works, they traverse the realms of individual and society, past and present, bringing into view perspectives toward the future.

Jr-Yun Lee’s practice explores the relationships between religion, the individual, and society. She draws motifs from bookshoused in museums and libraries, reconfiguring them into new compositions which she realizes through photopolymer printmaking. Her work investigates how abstract concepts of faith are understood by people and what they signify personally. By tracing history from the past to the present through printed matter and deconstructing and recombining it, Lee narrates personal experiences that cannot be reproduced. While her works carry a visionary quality reminiscent of a prophet gazing into the future, they are simultaneously imbued with meticulous, deeply unique observations in every detail.

In contrast, Makoto Yoshiura’s works emerge without preselected motifs, allowing her consciousness to flow freely as she captures successive images as “signs.” Unlike Lee, who constructs her compositions with careful selection and logical scrutiny, the paths of Yoshiura’s drypoint lines move freely and energetically, and the blurring of lines and colors evokes unexpected immediacy. In fact, as the artist herself notes, Yoshiura draws extensive inspiration from folk art, crafts, tapestries, and textiles. The traces of human activity from long ago resonate with contemporary sensibilities, imparting her works with an impression of inevitable chance.

In printmaking, it is often said that planning the production process in reverse—anticipating the final image—is indispensable. Both artists engage with this long-standing tradition while attempting to transcend its linear approach. Lee draws hints from history, adding spatiality and relational connections to sequences of images, thereby weaving innovative narratives tinged with nostalgia. Yoshiura, on the other hand, interprets unexpected elements as signs, recording uncertain memories and formless ideas, in which the movements of her hand themselves manifest as thought and form, imbuing the surface with a sense of physical dynamism. Moreover, both artists reconsider the reproducibility intrinsic to printmaking—a feature that is also a limitation. Lee produces series of unique works that expand in diversity through repetition, while Yoshiura builds tension in her process by layering painterly lines and colors. Both approaches serve to deepen the artistic value of printmaking.

For this exhibition, gallery Unfold—a renovated traditional Japanese house transformed into a white-cube space—will present Lee’s latest works alongside Yoshiura’s early pieces. Conversely, gallery Biga, whose exterior is Western in style yet retains traditional Japanese interior elements, will showcase Lee’s earlier works together with Yoshiura’s latest creations. Across these distinct spaces, visitors are invited to experience the convergence of time, reflective composure and rich emotion, and the interplay of inevitable chance and signs as traces. Following the traces of the signs embedded in these works, one can sense moments when history and the present, exterior and interior, society and the individual, and tradition and innovation converge, opening up new perspectives on the world.

Curation｜Undold Contemporary
Text (Japanese)｜Mu-Wei Huang