With a practice grounded in repetition, patience, and physical engagement, Lee Bae’s work holds evidence of time spent, decisions made, and the meditative process of building presence through the simplest of materials. Subtly blurring the lines between drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, The form before is Lee Bae’s first exhibition in Australasia.

For more than thirty years, Lee Bae has explored the elemental, symbolic and material potential of charcoal. As an elemental substance forged in fire, charcoal is imbued with cultural memory, ritual and transformational properties. This exhibition brings these qualities forward, offering an immersive environment that foregrounds stillness, depth, and the elemental power of the colour black.

Works are hung on the wall, arranged on the gallery floor and suspended in space in tension with one another. The viewer is invited to step through a kind of carbonised forest that captures the physicality of the artist’s brush work.