jaewook lee portfolio
TRANSCRIPT
Less is Known on Earth
Date: 2015
Media: blue and red glow lights, objects made out of science books, geometric-shaped objects, rul-ers, scented plants, natural objects, performance; 2 hours.
Dimensions: 442” x 300” x 192”
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/123510391
Less is Known on Earth is an inter-disciplinary installation project that explores the relationship between the Earth itself and the way that our mind projects meanings onto it. The project presents objects on Earth back in question, revealing their irreducible qualities beyond our comprehension. The exhibition presents man-made objects, nat-ural objects, scientific experiments, and historical art works that reflect things on Earth. For the project, I research and organize various dis-ciplines together, generating the flow of meanings through a network of connectivity.
When All Things Evaporate We’ll Talk About Minerals
Date: 2014
Media: Books, natural minerals, geometric-shaped objects, perfor-mance; 1 hour.
Dimensions: 450” x 450 “ x 300”
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/101802618
A meteorite-shaped object made out of a book about meteorties.
I will move through air A Woman Who Taught Me How to Write in Her DreamsIs The Reader Outer Space?
Date: 2015
Media: objects made out of science books, geometric-shaped objects, natural objects, fossils, poems, perfumes, poems, performance; 2 hours.
Dimensions: 100’ x 16’ x 16’
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/134907186
If the Earth is a curator, what does an exhibition look like? The prem-ises are to think about the Earth as a living organism, and to grasp the earth’s perspective to look at the world. It broadens the subject of art more worldly, including the world of something-other-than-humans.
At this exhibition, dancers wander through structures containing phras-es written by Raimundas Malašaus-kas, objects resembling ores, and paintings symbolizing zero gravity or nothingness. Through these el-ements, the artist seeks to induce visitors to ask a basic question about themselves from the per-spective of the universe rather than from a human perspective.
Nothing But A Symphony
Date: 2014
Media: single-channel video with sound; 4:20 min.
Dimensions: variable
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/104112703
Nothing But A Symphony sees the world as vibrating melodies in uni-son. The Korean top cellist Jun-gran Lee plays an invisible cello in concert with a jellyfish, and primary colors, creating a rhythmical har-mony of Nature.
Sense (avscularemain)
Date: 2014
A collaboration with Ali Van
Media: an audio-play with Ali Van’s voice-over (an excerpt from André Breton’s Mad Love), scented plants, performance with sound; 1hour.
Dimensions: variable
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/106740766
Less is Known on Earth
Date: 2014
Media: various objects, the sheep brains, scented plants, performance; 1 hour.
Dimensions: variable
Music Thinks Itself in Me
Date: 2014
Media: a string quartet; perfor-mance; 30:00 min.
String Quartet from Orquesta Da Capo Montevideo: Bruno Gonzalez(violin)Erika Alonso(violin)Rodrigo Añon(viola)Ignacio Añon(cello)
In the entrance hall of the museum, the four musicians of a string quartet sit on chairs, while playing a piece of music together without the instruments; i.e., a cellist, a violist, and two violinists play the “air” instruments by remembering a piece of music in their mind; each musician uses the memory of the music to activate the action of playing the instrument, and the action retroactively helps to stimulate the auditory memory. The musicians are fragmented individuals, while they move towards a shared destiny through imagination.
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/90288236
Becoming Pollens
Date: 2014
Media: powdered flags (South Korea and North Korea)
Dimensions: approx. 4 x 4 feet
Becoming Pollens is composed of the powdered flags of North and South Korea. The powdered flags are put under the two empty flags as if they are bleached out. The pile of powder has lost its original forms and meanings as flags. The white blank flags show the emptiness that was once filled out by symbolic meanings. That is to say, the powdered flags fail to be symbolized, revealing the very substances. It lies between the flag as substance and the flag as subject: it intersects between what it is and what it means. However, by being mixed, the powdered flags posit in the new symbolic meaning of the re-unification between two Koreas.
Becoming Pollens
Date: 2014
Media: powdered flags of the exact color proportions from eight national flags; Argentia, Chile, Czech, Korea(-south), Lithuania, Poland, Uruguay, and the United States.
Dimensions: approx. 30’ x 10’ x 0.1’
Hotel de InmigrantesMuseo Juan Manuel Blanes, Montevideo, Uruguay
Melt, Flow, Breathe
Date: 2013
Media: two-channel video with sound, fur; 10:00 min. loop
Dimensions: approx. 150” x 150” x 60”
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/81760006
Melt, Flow, Breathe is a two-channel video in which two separate yet identical frames interact with one another. Each frame shows snow flakes that fly in the air. They appear and disappear in con-cert with the humming sounds of a man and a woman. When the two distinct humming sounds are synced, the frames become one. When the two sounds are out of sync, the frames also become separated.
Building/Unbuilding
Date: 2013
Media: various found objects, TV, sound
Dimensions: variable
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/69780628
Ideasthesia
Date: 2013
Media: a TV monitor, a cellist playing air-cel-lo, while remembering Dmitri Shosta-kovich’s music (above)
an old USSR speaker manifactured in 60s with the wind sound (below)
Video link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb9pFdeIH4c
Perfect Lovers
Date: 2012
Media: Performance;1 hour.
Dimensions: variable
Two people dressing in military uniform hold two identical clocks. The performance, informed by the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, comments on identity struggles and relationships under oppres-sive militarization and its overt masculinized rituals. The work also draws on the ambivalent alliance between the American and the South Korean militaries in South Korea, pointing to issues of local discrimination of Korean officers and the economic opportunities brought by the US military bases in South Korea.
All Men Are Created Equal Bullshit
Date: 2011
Media: two-channel slide projection
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlm-28h5otw
All men are created equal Bullshit consists of two slide projections of myself transporting water through mouth, from river to ground, as I write Thomas Jefferson’s immortal phrase, “All men are created equal” - to which I add: bullshit. I created a condition “struggle” for this action by taping myself up. The laborious action appears absurd in light of New York City’s skyline, emblematic of the overdevel-oped city in contrast to the potent struggle of the masses against neo-liberal capitalism.
Nightmare
Date: 2011
Media: single-channel video with sound; 2:44 min., 2:17 min. respec-tively
Video Links:h t t p s : / / www . y o u t u b e . c om/watch?v=9UpfMZAUe94h t t p s : / /www . y o u t u b e . c om/watch?v=_fOcel905Qk
Nightmare is composed of two single-channel videos. I created a gun-projector that I altered a beam-projector by attaching a M16 BB gun with a 100m electrical wire. The projector becomes movable so that the performer can take it out. The performer shoots the images of bombs on smoke and moving trains at night. The reflected images are the historical bomb-drop done by U.S. army during Korean War. The images with the memory of war soon disappear as the smoke evaporates.
Big Seoul 1971
Date: 2011
Media: single-channel video with sound;1:27 min.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BqGbklDGc
Big Seoul 1971 was inspired by a poet Kwang Seop Kim, who wrote ‘Big Seoul’ in 1971. The works send out a message to recollect our Seoul. Now that Seoul is turning into a materialistic and visual place day by day after the rapid change from 1950 to 1960, the city has lost a true meaning of existence.
I produced film-stickers of ordinary sceneries with Han River as the center. A beautiful night view and wealthiness of the present city proj-ect memories and history of Seoul. Images of ladies doing laundry with laundry bats, a water carrier with water pitcher, children skating and sleighing on a surface of frozen riv-er, and old sceneries of Han Riv-er are pinned on a highway road. These two different images wander voidly between the past and the present and they flutter lightly inside our memories like a thin transparent film.
Window Project
Date: 2005 - 2011
Media: translucent film on windows, site-specific installation (below)
the recycled film with a live plant (right)
Video Link:https://vimeo.com/89045616
Window Project
Date: 2005 - 2011
Media: the recycled film from the window installation
Video Link:https://vimeo.com/89045616
Window Project
Date: 2007
Media: translucent flim on windows, photographic documentation.
Neo Gothec Fashion
Date: 2004 - 2006
Media: clothes made of straws, performance, photo-graphs, wall painting
Dimension: approx. 300” x 300” x 192”