Cheon pyo Lee
Posture correction
Reception Friday, May 23, 6 – 9 PM
May 5 – June 1, 2025
Press Release
In this exhibition, the body becomes a record of quiet endurance—a vessel shaped by repetition, by gestures too small to notice and too frequent to ignore. These are the postures of service, apology, and survival; movements performed so often they settle into the muscles, becoming invisible routines of submission and care.
Through a series of constructed forms, Posture Correction explores how repeated gestures of submission—apologies, softened tones, deferential postures—accumulate in the body. While emotional labor is deeply physical, it is often rendered invisible, expected to remain efficient, polite, and dehumanized. This exhibition brings those unseen exertions to the surface, translating their silent endurance into sculptural material.
Grounded in the artist’s own lived experience of migration, the work reflects on broader conditions of mobility, economic precarity, and social expectation. These sculptures aim to “fix” the body while affirming its pain and ability to wear pain with dignity. By offering to correct these postures, the exhibition proposes a shift in perception, inviting viewers to recognize and reflect on the unseen burdens so many carry.
Cheon Pyo Lee is an artist and educator based in New York. He currently teaches at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Tomato Mouse is an artist-run nonprofit gallery in Brooklyn. Gallery hours are Friday and Saturday from 1 to 7 PM and by appointment. For more information, please contact Rebecca Bird at 347.365.6741 or tomatomousetomatomouse(at)gmail.