PBG presents Traces of Inspiration: The Night When Nothing Becomes Everything, a solo exhibition by Jaemin Lee, on view from September 30 to October 14, 2026. The exhibition explores the artist’s painterly inquiry through the process by which an everyday scene is first perceived as an image, then passes through memory and emotion before it is realized as a painting.
Lee’s paintings begin with the ordinary, everyday scenery she encountered while living in Singapore. Palm trees and plumeria, banana and mango trees, a swimming pool where children once lingered—the moment such scenes catch her eye, they are held in memory as images. Gradually altered within memory, and shaped through the repeated acts of looking and painting, they settle onto the canvas in new forms. In this process, painting moves away from representing its subject and emerges instead as an accumulation of time spent looking, of memory, and of sensation. Through the repeated act of erasing and repainting, the original landscape is gradually translated into the artist’s own visual language.
The “night” in the exhibition title is tied to the time in which this transformation takes place. The walks that follow a day’s work, and the scenery of the night, become an occasion to sort through the experiences and thoughts of the day and to reconnect scattered images and memories. A painting is completed before the canvas, yet at the same time it continues into new images in the hours that follow.
Traces of Inspiration follows the course by which a single scene lingers in the gaze, remains in memory, and is ultimately realized as an image through a repeated painterly process. In doing so, the exhibition considers how ordinary moments of daily life acquire new meaning through personal experience and the accumulation of time. A landscape that was once nothing passes through time spent looking and the workings of memory to become a painting—and in that moment, it is transformed into an image that holds a special meaning of its own.
Lee’s paintings begin with the ordinary, everyday scenery she encountered while living in Singapore. Palm trees and plumeria, banana and mango trees, a swimming pool where children once lingered—the moment such scenes catch her eye, they are held in memory as images. Gradually altered within memory, and shaped through the repeated acts of looking and painting, they settle onto the canvas in new forms. In this process, painting moves away from representing its subject and emerges instead as an accumulation of time spent looking, of memory, and of sensation. Through the repeated act of erasing and repainting, the original landscape is gradually translated into the artist’s own visual language.
The “night” in the exhibition title is tied to the time in which this transformation takes place. The walks that follow a day’s work, and the scenery of the night, become an occasion to sort through the experiences and thoughts of the day and to reconnect scattered images and memories. A painting is completed before the canvas, yet at the same time it continues into new images in the hours that follow.
Traces of Inspiration follows the course by which a single scene lingers in the gaze, remains in memory, and is ultimately realized as an image through a repeated painterly process. In doing so, the exhibition considers how ordinary moments of daily life acquire new meaning through personal experience and the accumulation of time. A landscape that was once nothing passes through time spent looking and the workings of memory to become a painting—and in that moment, it is transformed into an image that holds a special meaning of its own.
