Since its inception in 2009 as an art consultancy, BB&M has been instrumental in the rise of some of the most acclaimed contemporary Korean artists on the international stage, including Lee Bul, Minouk Lim, and Bae Young-whan. BB&M’s current iteration as an independent gallery is a joint effort between James B. Lee (Founding Principal) and Si Young Hur (Principal), who brings extensive experience as director and partner in Seoul’s leading galleries, where she was responsible for exhibitions of such artists as Thomas Struth, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, and Yun Hyong-keun, a key figure in Dansaekhwa.
The current gallery was launched in 2021 with a solo exhibition of Lee Bul, widely recognized as the leading Korean artist of her generation. BB&M’s roster includes, in addition to Lee, critically important Korean figures such as Minouk Lim, Bae Young-whan, Jinjoon Lee, and Sikyung Sung, working across a range of genres from sculpture and painting to installation and video. The gallery also represents younger international artists rising in recognition and spanning different visual cultures, among them Alex Dodge and Miko Veldkamp.
From the outset BB&M has also sought to introduce curatorial perspectives from outside the commercial sector to ensure its program is intellectually expansive, inviting, for instance, the former New Museum curator Dan Cameron to organize an exhibition. These efforts reflect the gallery’s long-term mission of building an exhibition program that engages both critically and aesthetically with contemporary visual ideas.