Installation view ©Chamber 1965

《THINGS LEFT UNMADE》 is the title encompassing the works of two artists, Ji Hyun Lee and Sijae Jang. “Things left unmade” may be material or immaterial. They may be existences left behind in some form in space and time. Or they may be the artists themselves. The two artists’ works may be understood as an attempt to summon into the exhibition space those indeterminate “things left unmade.” Each artist created their works while holding on to personal experiences or the residual emotions arising from them. The works here may not represent completion. Because in the space, the works ceaselessly move, linger, or depart, while still engaging in communication.

At the same time, that which has not been fully reduced to a work, that which still remains unrepresented, may also be “things left unmade.” In Chamber 1965, an old house remodeled into an exhibition space, the two artists’ works encounter each other in the air. Through their respective movements, countless repetitions that scatter away soon after generate a certain tension. The exhibition thus asks whether such “things” may be felt in this space.

Installation view ©Chamber 1965

Sijae Jang creates sculptural forms using industrial materials such as steel slate or vinyl tape—everyday consumables easily found in areas like Euljiro. He focuses on crafting desired images by utilizing the materials he possesses within a given space. Through repetitive actions such as wrapping red tape and hammering slates, he forms shapes. Jang says that when tearing tape, at times it makes a sound like a scream, and then soon after produces no sound at all. His repeated yet minutely varied sculptural gestures allow us to sense the shudder and tension underlying the everyday.

Ji Hyun Lee, on the other hand, produces images based on relational influences with his life environment, dwelling on the plane as a new space. The images he generates from borrowed fragments contain time-lag. This time-lag is less a flow of time than an explanation of change and movement. Lee duplicates and overlaps fragments of prefabricated animation images, randomly selected through a mobile application. Using the amorphous images generated through the app as a basis, he moves back and forth between figuration and abstraction, layering the canvas space shallowly. In this process, discrepancies endlessly arise between the direction in which paint is layered and the direction in which images transform, blur, or slip (as if animation film were passing through). The brush piles paint vertically, while the images tend to move diagonally, sometimes top to bottom, right to left.

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