Lehmann Maupin Seoul presents Protective Inscriptions, an exhibition of new work by London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh, whose practice reflects the fractured nature of communication, knowledge, and identity. Adapting elements of psychoanalysis within a formal aesthetic, El-Sayegh investigates the body as a site of cultural rupture, linguistic entropy, and mutated meaning. “I’m interested in this idea of lost time and the impossibility of finding a moment of origin,” states El-Sayegh, “My work builds fragmented histories into absurdist bodies and forms.” The artist’s first solo exhibition in Seoul, Protective Inscriptions will feature an immersive installation, combining painting and soundscape to activate a formless language of flesh and vibration.

For this exhibition, El-Sayegh has created a skin of unstretched canvases that wraps the walls of the gallery, overlaid with a new suite of Net-Grid paintings. A continuation of the artist’s ongoing Net-Grid series (begun in 2013), this installation offers insight into the method of their making. Created through the assemblage of material and overlaid with hand-painted grids, these works represent the process of trapping, distilling, and retaining information, capturing both intended meaning and happenstance associations. Beneath each clean, schematic exterior lies a bruised surface that evokes wounded flesh. This dense material layering is echoed in the accompanying sound work, which reverberates throughout the space, breathing and vibrating in a low hum. Here, El-Sayegh’s dense red grids, intense layers of color, and aural environment work in tandem to create a visceral experience that is both bodily and cerebral.