OCHI is pleased to present How To Break The Spell, an exhibition of new work by artist Adehla Lee. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. How To Break The Spell will be on view at OCHI, located at 3301 W Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, California from March 11 through April 22, 2023. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, March 11^th from 6:00 to 8:00 PM PST.

How To Break The Spell features new paintings of young women and girls set within domestic interior and introspective backyard spaces that allude to personal memories, family anecdotes, and fictional narratives. Lee’s situational and self-referential scenes portray furtive figures accustomed to entertaining themselves—or from a parent’s perspective, keeping out of trouble—in the semi privacy of a family home.

Lee mixes elements of fantasy and realism to create compositions inspired by her defiant and creative matriarchal lineage—Lee’s grandmother was a Shaman, her aunt is a Buddhist priest, and her mother is a photographer and a gardener. Referencing her mother’s green thumb, Lee adorns her protagonists and their environments with motifs from the natural world. While flower print patterns, bouquets, and trellised roses can be interpreted as symbols of traditional Korean femininity, Lee subverts stereotypes by gesturing towards the cultural implications of teaching girls to be submissive, innocent, docile, and image obsessed.

Drawing from traditional Korean design aesthetics, Lee’s candy-colored pinks, jade green locks, and hopeful blues emphasize each portrait’s pensive, shy, playful, cautious, or curious moods. Some girls whisper softly or twirl their hair in a self-soothing manner. Several figures gaze into mirrors, with reflections offering a taste of agency in the form of an imaginary friend, a space for self-care, or portal within which to disassociate. In The Bannister (2022), a girl with pink polished fingernails and braided pigtails tests her boundaries beyond any of her cohort—wedging her head between spindles on a staircase. Though temporarily trapped, she knows she’ll be free in a matter of time.

Adehla Lee (b. 1983, Busan, South Korea) received her BFA from Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY. Lee’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the ISE Cultural Foundation, Allegra LaViola Gallery, and Interstate Projects in New York, NY; Karst Gallery in Plymouth, United Kingdom; Common Center and Space art1 in Seoul, South Korea; and OCHI is Los Angeles, CA and Sun Valley, ID. Lee’s work has been featured in various publications including Whitewall Magazine, Juxtapoz, The Hollywood Reporter, Robb Report, Medium, Vegas Magazine, and BMore Art. Her work is held in public collections including Arsenal Contemporary Art in New York, NY and Montreal, Canada and Superfrico at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, NV. Lee currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.