L GALLERY presents Shadow, a solo exhibition by Diren Lee. Marking the artist’s first exhibition devoted entirely to drawing, Shadow introduces a new medium through which Lee extends and reconfigures the psychological landscape that has long occupied her practice.

Across her previous paintings, Lee has explored figures shaped by opposing forces: conflicting emotions, polarized states of being, and the shifting boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious. Her characters have often existed within these tensions, embodying the instability of identities that cannot be reduced to a single emotional or psychological state.

In this new body of drawings, these figures emerge as “shadows”—presences that have remained within the artist, simultaneously asking to be revealed and concealed. They occupy an intimate space between confession and withdrawal, as if each work records a private monologue that has briefly surfaced before disappearing again. Rather than constructing a fixed narrative, the drawings unfold like fragments of an essay: incomplete thoughts, emotional residues, and fleeting images gathered from within.

Lee’s restrained pencil marks give these fragments a quiet physical presence. Through subtle lines and sparse gestures, the drawings trace a broad terrain where conscious thought and unconscious impulse overlap. What appears on the paper is neither entirely imagined nor fully articulated; instead, it remains suspended between what can be recognized and what resists definition.

In this sense, Shadow may be read as an introspective record. The drawings resemble private confessions formed through the act of making—moments in which the artist turns inward and encounters the figures, emotions, and memories that have accompanied her over time.

Rather than offering resolution, the exhibition allows these shadows to remain unresolved. Their presence suggests that what we hide is not necessarily something to be overcome, but something that continues to coexist with us, shaping how we see ourselves and the world around us.

Shadow therefore becomes a space of quiet confrontation and solace: a place where what has remained hidden can momentarily take form, and where vulnerability itself can become another way of being held.