Gallery
Baton is pleased to announce 《Exceptionally
Complex, Yet Elegantly Engineered》, a solo exhibition
by Jaeseok Lee (b. 1989) from 23 August to 27 September 2023 in Hannam-dong
space. The exhibition provides an inspiring opportunity to discover a new
series of works by Jaeseok Lee, who has expanded his interests from aspects of
uniformed lifestyle within the social system towards the mechanism of nature
and the universe and how it is perceived.
'The
laws of nature' indicate 'the intrinsic logic of every object', inclusively
referring to principles and manners of how the phenomenal world operates. The
gravitational force—allowing each existence, including human beings, to be
present and function in the peculiar terrestrial circumstance—had been a
challenging research subject by numerous scientists even before Newton’s law.
Among them, Leonardo da Vinci was a widely known pioneer deeply fascinated by
the mystery of gravity through the constant observation of falls and the flight
of birds. His extensive exploration and ground-breaking discoveries in various
fields of art and science must have required his persistent study and analysis
of fundamental natural laws, as his collection of papers, 『Codex Arundel』, demonstrates.
The
mechanism of gravity that takes a clear part in not only interaction among all
objects but the constancy of the universe has a significant influence on Lee’s
practice either directly or indirectly. The diagram of a tent and a shade
reminiscent of a structural manual of industrial goods, a delicate
consideration of centroid and equilibrium of each element in his paintings, and
a sophisticated adaptation of landscapes without hyperbole reveal that the
described spaces are fragments of reality. The black and white sphere
surrounded by an aura, which appeared as Lee’s spatial staging began to include
the cosmic domain, is a factor enlightening viewers to be aware that the
depicted sceneries and images still are under the umbrella of general physical
phenomena.
For
instance, in the series of ‘Alignment’ (2023), the tight
balance between the main figurative agents dividing the upper and below parts
of the entire plane implies the gravitational pull of the moon causing the
tides. On the other hand, the shape of a tree stump or a bough seems to be
suspended amid the air against gravity in Carrier_1, 2 (2023),
breaking the physics; this surreal composition signifies that the painted scene
does not belong to commonsense space and time and the floating objects do not
necessarily follow the practical causal laws. When he designed digital game
items in the past, Lee was astonished by a colony of pixels playing a role in
an individual entity. The experience turned out as the tree figures, whose life
cycles seemingly run out, have potential in phase transition or a new life’s
beginning as considerable as their evident volume show.
Looking
closely into the frequently appearing symbols and their undertones is the best
way to grasp Lee’s practice and overview. Having emerged since his early works
and conveyed his experiences during military service, the signs are ‘the second
title’ tagged onto machines and products produced or people temporarily
confined to maintain the efficient and stable system of the unusual military
community. Interestingly, he deliberately exposes hierarchical dynamics in his
paintings since hidden clues for understanding them are hardly delivered
without additional explanation due to their particular limits as a closed
two-dimensional medium. Also, this approach corresponds to the fact that the
motifs of symbols of his works originally stemmed from the impassible
institution, the army.
