Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present When the Sun Shines Again, a solo exhibition of new paintings by South Korean artist Guimi You. In this exhibition, the artist turns toward a quiet yet profound gesture: the act of beginning again. Conceived as a tribute to those who have returned to creating after time away, the works unfold through a recurring image of sunlight, an enduring symbol of clarity, renewal, and hope. If darkness unsettles us because it obscures what lies ahead, morning offers a gentle correction. As light enters, forms reappear, and with them, the possibility of continuation. It is within this passage, from obscurity to illumination, that the artist’s works take shape. When the Sun Shines Again marks You’s first major solo presentation in New York. 

At its center is Painting, Again, a meditation on return. The artist draws from the lives of close friends, women who, after years devoted to caregiving and domestic life, have begun to reclaim their artistic practices. Once immersed in the shared experiences of art school, their paths diverged as time and responsibility intervened. Now, in the margins of their daily routines, they have carved out space to paint again. A corner of a room, a patch of floor, a quiet morning after sending children to school, these become sites of reawakening. Within the composition, works created by these friends are embedded into the painting itself, following conversations in which each selected the piece they felt most deeply connected to. Their images, of a woman at the sink, of a solitary figure, of landscapes and fleeting gestures, coexist within the artist’s own pictorial space. In this layering, authorship becomes shared, and painting becomes a site of quiet solidarity.