Installation view © Chapter II

The English term, ‘sign’, is de-corded in our recognition system more quickly than the equivalent Korean word. A sign is an action, image, alphabet or number whose presence or occurrence indicates corresponding semantics or behaviors according to a specific agreement. There are countless signs and their subspecies in every culture, era, region, society or community. Accordingly, the agreed system, which decides the corresponding value when they operate, is a crucial precondition for signs; and this structure has developed and reinforced by particular groups or social classes exclusively.

To contemplate the significance and implication of signs in Jaeseok Lee’s practice is a shortcut to understanding his outlook. Signs appeared even in his prior works that successfully reflected his military service experiences. They could be seen as ‘the second name’ schematically given by the artist to several means such as machines, goods or even temporarily confined people under strict order to achieve an ideal goal the peculiar group sought. Intriguingly, the power relations influence the act of naming since the painting genre is always concluded in a two-dimensional outcome causing a lack of methods to share the agreement without the artist’s additional explanation.

In terms of context, it is relevant to the fact that the motifs of signs observed in his works clearly stem from the closed circumstance of the army. In the end, the viewers can grasp the hardship of the early archaeologists who researched Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. At the same time, this uncertainty not only enhances the possibility of diverse interpretations and curiosity in each viewer’s attitude towards images but maintains the mysterious aspects of the works by preventing obvious analysis. 

In this exhibition, 《Trajectory of the Spearhead》, what needs to be paid attention to is how Lee managed to expand spatial staging since the elements of the universe intervened in his works. The black and white sphere surrounded by an aura frequently painted on the upper part of the planes reminds us that the depicted landscapes and objects depend on general physical phenomena. The sophisticated adaptation of visually familiar landscapes without exaggeration allows his paintings to have a sense of silence as composed as the vacant space is. The landscapes let inanimate objects arrayed in his paintings be more plausible, as a background of classical paintings often plays a critical role in asserting authenticity in subjects and events described.


Jaeseok Lee, Boundary of Time, 2022 © Chapter II

The huge-scale piece, Boundary of Time (2022), in the window space implicitly presents the new storytelling by Jaeseok Lee. In the painting, the spearhead, undoubtedly pointing towards the upper section of the entire plane, stands approaching the glimmering sphere and the white fabric whose pierced body is bound against its intention moves as though drifting. The spear, the agent of the restrain tightly anchored on the ground by ropes, creates the dynamics in the painting while the white fabric, an unknown subject attempting to float against gravity, shows the resisting force of the composition by being unfastened and steadily unfolding. Instead of suggesting the clear hierarchy of military culture discovered in his early works, Lee attempts to gain universal comprehension of the painting by applying dichotomous concepts in two conflicting images, the spear (standing for confinement) and the motion (standing for anti-exploitation).

In conclusion, the directions the trajectory of the spearhead indicates are where different worlds confront each other, where phase transition occurs, where entropy shifts and the ordinary sceneries in diverse forms we encounter each day.

References