Hyun-Sook Lee – Korean Gallerist

As a champion of international and South Korean contemporary art, Hyun-Sook Lee is a dealer with a passion to share the works of others. Lee is well known for being the “grande dame of the Korean art scene” and her gallery Kukje means “international” in Korean. She sticks to familiar art, from amazing solo artists to stars from the international art world like Anish Kapoor, and it seems to work.

Her gallery promotes the works of many mid-career Korean artists and many emerging practitioners, like Haegue Yang and Kimsooja. To draw in new visitors, she held a show in the summer that was considered edgy called Wellknown Unknown. In 2016, Lee was named one of the year’s most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview magazine.

The masculine and feminine name Hyun is a Korean given name that is a variant transcription of Hyeon, which is taken from the Sino-Korean character 賢 that means “worthy, virtuous, or able” or from other characters that have the same pronunciation. The name usually happen in combination with another character, even though it is occasionally used as a stand-alone name.

The Korean name Sook, or Suk, is used as both a single syllable given name and an element in many two-syllable given names. The meaning of the given name Sook depends on the hanja used. The name can mean “pure”, “uncle”, “sleep”, “who”, “ripe”, “solemn”, “schoolroom”, “jade bowl”, “tall and straight”, “early”, “deep”, “bean”, or refer to a type of jade.