On Adrienne Lee’s “Assisi” series
January 1, 2026

By Chunbum Park

Adrienne Lee’s body of work titled “Assisi” is an evolution of her abstract language, which she painted for an installation of a single work at the Oratorio di Santa Chiarella in Assisi. While she made numerous paintings in this series, we will be examining “Assisi” no.5, 11, 12, 16, and 17.

Assisi is a town and a commune in Italy, on the western side of Mount Subasio. Saint Francis of Assisi, who was born here, founded the Franciscan religious order in the year 1208, which was an important occurrence in the Catholic Church. The Oratario di Santa Chiarella is part of the Basilica of Santa Chiara (Saint Clare), which is a Gothic church begun in 1257.

How do Lee’s works titled “Assisi” differentiate themselves from her previous works titled “Dancheong?” Does the artist approach the people, the place, and the religiosity of Assisi from an outsider’s perspective or as a believer? And can the specificity of Assisi as a place and an idea be found within Lee’s paintings?

Lee often installs her works on unstretched canvas by laying them down onto the ground or the floor. This is because she wants her work and by extension herself to take up a real portion of the place like the embassies that occupy real estate. How she presents her work is in part a reaction against her life experience of living abroad with her father, who is a South Korean diplomat, in which she had to remind herself that she was a real part of the community and not just a temporary visitor.

The artist describes her abstract style as relating to writing, in which words are read from left to right with a repeating slant, almost like a cursive. In terms of form, Lee must deconstruct the outer representational image of the subject in order to reprocess and reconstruct it in her own language… to capture the inner essence of Assisi. Almost like grinding a cow or pig into a sausage or spam form, for easy consumption and digestion, Lee should represent Assisi as one of interplay between sinful chaos and spiritual order, in which order triumphs in the end or is positioned centrally as the main narrative. Or perhaps a disorderly order must arise in which harmony as the thesis absorbs disharmony as the antithesis and synthesizes a new kind of dynamic stability. Is this perhaps what we observe in Lee’s works?

(Assisi) no. 12, acrylic and hanji on unprimed and unstretched canvas

In “Assisi no. 12,” the forms could be described as whimsical and playful due to the repetition of bouncy strokes. But this springing of life and joy could also be the result of the artist’s reflection on the hopeful idealism that comprises the ideology of belief within the Catholic religion. A dark and cold landscape awaits in the horizon past the vicinity of the bright pink colors, yet a warmer possibility can be discerned at a farther away distance past this dark territory. Understanding Lee’s paintings as neither pure abstractions nor non-objective paintings but as abstracted landscapes can introduce greater depth with narrative and symbolic interpretations. Each layer or strata occupies a space and time (since time is required for us to move through space), in which each space or situation can be experienced sequentially as segments as much as they can be seen as a whole, single image. Imagine a sandwich with many layers of ingredients, which you can taste all at the same time or each individually. What happens in Assisi no. 12 is the beginning of childhood or youth marked by idealism, followed by the future of a painful and dark struggle with the questions of life, which leads us to the end state of trauma, reflection, and eventual healing. We can observe that the end state as represented by the upper echelon or layer of colors near the top feel so much more authentic and carry greater depth than the bright regions that are closer to the viewer, which are placed lower to the bottom of the painting.

In “Assisi no. 11,” the image feels unstable or dynamic, with the diagonal forms at the bottom base destabilizing the overall composition. Depending on the inner state of mind of the viewer, the painting is either, neither, or both, if a very open mind could understand both possibilities at the same time. The painting is like a mirror that reflects or projects the viewer’s internal state into how s/he or they interprets the work. The juxtaposition of the diagonals with the verticals suggest the base structures of the buildings with walls and roofs or even the Korean alphabet, which points to the Korean root of Lee’s writing. Are the colors cliche or intentional? It is hard to say at first glance. Blue and orangish red would appear commonly used as a complementary color scheme; yet, the use of the Hanji introduces a unique kind of materiality to the work, which carries a meditative depth. It becomes apparent that we cannot assess the colors accurately by isolating it from form, composition, or even the material that exudes the colors. The painting presents a double bind relationship between the less prominent strokes of magenta and brown at the upper area and the blue that pops out below and are semi-erased or overlaid with the background red. Seen as a whole, the painting appears to be a commentary on the letting go of one’s idea of self and ego to manifest the Christian ideal of selfless and devout piety.

Detail of (Assisi) no. 11

In “Assisi no. 16,” the thick, noodle-like forms would appear initially to be much more suggestive of an experimental and/or commercial environment rather than a spiritual place devoted to worship. However, this could prove to be a stereotypical interpretation based on the assumption of binary logic that associates spiritual/religious with classical and non-spiritual/non-religious with the modern or contemporary. In fact, the neutral white and greys must reference the facade of a neutral color scheme of the classical artifacts and architecture (a facade, since in Greece and Rome, the western origin of classical art, the neutral white marbles were colored). Or, within an alternative interpretation, they could depict clouds and misty fog that arose from the high heat of the summer, which would shroud the deep blue sky as indicated by the slanted blocks of Prussian Blue and perhaps Paynes Grey as well. These cool and near-black colors are contrasted by the mid-dark reds and burnt siennas at the bottom, which could associate the ideas of sin and salvation. The darkest color is a cool spiritual and heavenly blue, while the hues of passion and fervor are muddied and earthened. This is how the ideologies concerning passion and spirituality oppose and balance one another, since most people exhibit both qualities; yet, the spiritual color is positioned superior to the warm color because the former is the more powerful symbol of the eagle of the sky while the latter exists in the lower hierarchy like a bear on the ground, if these chromatic oppositions could be represented within the symbolic realm. 

In “Assisi no. 17,” the blue rhomboidal forms have corners that are sharp, cutting at low angles and thereby suggesting mechanical or technological personality, like a Japanese or Korean bullet train. Reality is coded with mathematics and probability; even with the technological advances, we can delay death but not entirely avert it; divinity has the power over our lives and fate. The bright, teal diagonal strokes appear as the electrons representing 0’s and 1’s that are zipping by within the computer circuitry. There is also the Bohr–Einstein debate (based on Einstein’s publication of the “EPR paper”) between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein on the nature of entanglement that violates the theory of relativity. If two particles are entangled, and one of them is measured in terms of the position or momentum, then the other entangled particle’s momentum could also be instantaneously known, even if the two particles are separated by distance. This would violate the limit of communication and interaction, that no information can travel faster than the speed of light. So at the end of the scientific inquiry, we find paradoxes and impossibilities within our 3-dimensional world that cannot be fully explained without attaining access to the higher dimensions, which we are unable to do. And this may be the limitation of science and technology, which is humanity’s futile attempt to become god and master and manipulate mother nature. While these kinds of ideas are not “illustrated” verbatim by Lee’s painting, they are suggested by the digital colors and their systemic arrangement as on and off states, almost as if they were describing a repeating wave with crests and sea level.

(Assisi) no. 5, acrylic and hanji on unprimed and unstretched canvas

But it is likely “Assisi no. 5” that most successfully captures the idea of Assisi, in which the tension between sin and salvation can be represented as the dis-harmonic harmony or the synthesis between harmony and disharmony. In such a synthesis, the former would triumph over the latter, just as good must encounter evil in order to grow and bring about true justice in the world. The overlaying of slanted, white blocks suggests translucency, honesty, clarity, and sincerity. The work lacks unnecessary details and is most sincere and controlled out of the five pieces, which means “without wax,” in reference to the sculptural practice around the Renaissance of using wax to fix broken statues. The forms of abstract brush strokes are not whimsical or playful but intentional, solemn, and reserved. Yet the graceful nature (perhaps of divinity itself) is also there in how the forms and colors harmoniously co-exist and belong with one another in acceptance. In this most successful piece, the fifth angel or creation of the series, Lee captures the essence of Assisi without the need to illustrate any external narrative or object. The essence consists of a feeling and an idea of humanity and our flaws and potential and limitations and tendency to lose ourselves in the chaos, which we must eventually overcome… how we live and go through life as single individuals, actors, and observers under the myth of privacy and being alone, even as we are under the gaze of the heavens and even as we are communal creatures that belong to a society and nations. This is the contradiction and the necessity of life. The essence is also historical in that the Franciscan religious order strived to live out the examples of the Gospel through the embrace of poverty, chastity, humility, and service to the poor and the weak. The place of Assisi is heavily defined by the examples set by Saint Francis of Assisi in upholding a spiritual life, and the painting most highly reflects this nature of Assisi.

In examining the Assisi series by Adrienne Lee, one undergoes a kind of a spiritual journey or an internal transformation, which suggests the power of art in excavating meaning and inspiration from a spiritual subject or world. The artist successfully made use of this power or well of meaning to move herself to make this series of powerful abstract paintings, which allow us to find out more about ourselves and what human truly is. And it holds an important lesson for people not only in art but within all genres of creativity – that the subject and the source material that we take interest in and allow ourselves to be moved by is very important; a meaningful and difficult subject matter that must be investigated for a deeper and delayed gratification will inspire so much more than just something fun or pretty involving immediate gratification. The art world also needs a spiritual compass and re-tuning of our priorities, and Lee’s art shows just what that other direction might be.