Installation view of 《XxX (Two Times)》 © Rund Gallery

Photographer Myoung Ho Lee, whose works are permanently collected by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and loved by global collectors, has presented new works.

Photographer Myoung Ho Lee is holding a two-person exhibition 《XxX (Two Times)》 with his student Jeongkeun Lee at Rund Gallery in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, until the 31st.

Curated by Hyowon Kim, the exhibition presents works by Myoung Ho Lee and Jeongkeun Lee that reflect perspectives penetrating the pandemic era in which everything has become uncertain.

Through his representative ‘Tree’ series, Myoung Ho Lee previously gained attention by reversing the conventional approach of depicting trees. Instead of drawing trees, he installed a large white canvas behind real trees and photographed them, thereby illuminating and revealing the actual trees themselves. In this exhibition, he presents new works different from his previous practice. These are installation works layering printed images of small plants inside glass boxes. At first glance, the small plant images inside the glass boxes are not easily noticeable due to their size, but upon closer observation, they reveal their presence.

Myoung Ho Lee stated, “I have always wondered what it means for time to accumulate. In physics, they even say that time does not exist,” adding, “My interest in the relationship between the virtual and the real led to this work. Thoughts about the work accumulated layer by layer every day until, at a certain moment, the idea emerged. It can be said to be a work that produces a three-dimensional spatial effect by stacking two-dimensional layers of four-dimensional time.”

Installation view of 《XxX (Two Times)》 © Rund Gallery

He continued, “I think photography is ultimately about the relationship between layers—layers and layers. What matters is how each layer within a single image is interpreted and related. To symbolize this, I layered prints using multiple sheets of glass so that viewers focus on the effects they produce. When plant images are layered according to the strata of time, they appear almost like real plants. Photography compresses 3D into 2D, and this work can be seen as restoring it back into 3D. It is also intended to prompt reconsideration of the meaning of photography.”

The small plants inside the glass boxes seem to symbolize nature that we must cherish and protect. Especially in the current situation where all life on Earth, including humanity, is threatened by the climate crisis, the work reminds us of the need to stop the rapidly advancing climate clock.

Jeongkeun Lee presented the uncertain present situation caused by the pandemic through a more direct photographic language. In his ‘DEAD PAN’ series, he installed translucent glass in front of objects and photographed them so that their original forms could not be recognized, symbolizing the ambiguity of many things we once took for granted in the current pandemic era.

Jeongkeun Lee said, “It was only after getting married that I realized my wife likes sweet and sour pork. This trivial episode became a turning point that sparked distrust in things I thought I knew well, which led to the idea that my work, too, is unclear, resulting in the ‘DEAD PAN’ series. Some people see it as the moon, others as a flower. This ambiguity of opacity reveals another symbol or form. It is an attempt to capture in photography the phenomenon of the world becoming more ambiguous due to the pandemic.”

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