Jaewook Lee

2008-2016
Becoming-Earth

Title: After Nature

After Nature, a collobration among Jaewook Lee(artist) X Everyday Prac-

Jaewook Lee X Everyday Practice X Space ONewWall

tice(designer) X Space ONewWall(gallery), brings together watercolor

Media: Multimedia installatoin

drawings, installation, natural objects, and designed posters, thinking

Size: 20 x 20 x 13 feet

about a post-anthropocene condition. The project shows the coherent rela-

Year: 2016

tionship among the artist, the designer, and the gallery. Comtemporary art
comes from a range of fields of study that encourage opportunities to work
in cross-disciplinary ways and finds a collobration as an intergral part of an
exhibition. The notions of creation, authorship, and originality have been
increasingly burred. We do research, select (ready-made), appropriate,
experiment, contextualize, cooperate, run budgets, and make connections
together.

Title: Treatise on Rhythm, Color, and Birdsong

Treatise on Rhythm, Color, and Birdsong is inspired by Olivier Messiaen,

Media: A series of watercolor drawings and paintings

one of the most influential composers of the 20thcentury. The idea is based

Size: from 18 x 24 inches to 30 x 40 inches

on syneasthesia and birdsongs which inspired Messiaens music, imagining

Year: 2016

his musical notations of birdsongs in visual forms in the mind.

Title: Treatise on Rhythm, Color, and Birdsong

Treatise on Rhythm, Color, and Birdsong revisits Olivier Messiaen, one

Media: Multimedia installatoin

of the most influential composers of the 20thcentury, and Spanish-born

Size: 33 x 20 x 13 feet

Mexican surrealist painter Remedios Varo. It presents a video, two instal-

Year: 2016

lations, a live flute performance, and five drawings that focus on the inter-

Installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/182321340

esting intersection between the two genius artists. Besides the coincidental

Single-channel video: https://vimeo.com/170724913

fact that they were both born in December 1908, they both sought artistic
inspirations from other fields of knowledge such as science, mysticism,
and ecology. They attempted to collaborate with other fields to express the
complex world. Their interdisciplinary approach expands the sphere of art
more broadly.
Treatise on Rhythm, Color, and Birdsong sheds light on the intersection
between Utahs canyons and birdsongs which inspired Messiaens music
and the elements of Varos paintings. I do not position myself as a mere
producer of art objects, but a mediator who facilitates interactions among
different fields by reviving the two artists from the past. I work as a researcher who focuses on artists of the past who have been marginalized
from the canonical art history and gives them new meanings and uses the
resources as a springboard for artistic imagination.

Title: The Geology of Morals

The Geology of Morals is a single-channel video which sees the Earth as a

Media: Single-channel video with sound

living organism that consists of mathematizable principles of matter. The

Duration: 02:40

title borrows from the 3rd chapter of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and

Year: 2016

Guattari. The video presents objects on Earth back in question, reveal-

Single-channel video: https://vimeo.com/185255026

ing their irreducible qualities beyond our comprehension. It understands

nature before the imprinting of human marks and construction of language
and after. In the video, a computer-generated voice reads an excerpt from
the 3rd chapter over the video footages of ices in both macroscopic and
microscopic levels with a series of geometric shapes.

Title: Becoming Pollens_I

Becoming Pollens is composed of the powdered flags of North and South

Media: Powdered Flags (South Korea and North Korea)

Korea. The pile of powder has lost its original forms and meanings as flags.

Size: 4 x 4 feet

It fails to be symbolized and reveals the very substance. The powdered

Year: 2013

flags posit in the new symbolic meaning of the re-unification between two
Koreas.

Title: Becoming Pollens_II

Media: Powdered flags of the colors of eight national flags; Argentia,

Objects, ideologies, and sounds are freed of their origins and move

Chile, Czech, Korea(south), Lithuania, Poland, Uruguay, and the United

around like epidemic, contagion, and the wind to become new other

States.

things. Unbuilding is the erosion of the boundary that can allow for a new

Size: Approx. 30 x 10 x 0.1 feet

emergent whole.

Year: 2014

Title: I will move through air A Woman Who Taught Me How to Write

If the Earth is a curator, what would an exhibition look like? The premises

in Her Dreams Is The Reader Outer Space?

are to think about the Earth as a living organism, and to grasp the earths

Media: Multimedia installation and perfomance

perspective to look at the world. I attempt to combine science with the

Size: 80 x 16 x 16 feet

humanities in our industrialized society where knowledge has become little

Performance duration: 01:00:00

more than a tool for most people. I regard physical phenomena as some-

Year: 2014

thing unstable that continues to change through human intervention, rath-

Performance documentation: https://vimeo.com/134907186

er than something fixed and universal. I pay attention to the way physical
phenomena are recognized subjectively by individuals.
At this exhibition, dancers wander through structures containing phrases written by Raimundas Malaauskas, objects resembling minerals, and
paintings symbolizing zero gravity or nothingness. Through these elements, I seek to induce visitors to ask a basic question about themselves
from the perspective of the universe rather than from a human perspective.

Title: Window Project

The project has two parts. First, I placed translucent silhouettes of sky-

Media: Multimedia installation and photographs

scrapers from across the globe on the windows of a new building in the

Size: 32 x 32 x 10 feet

fast-growing cities such as Seoul and Shanghai. Contrasting the real exteri-

Year: 2008

or view with the added silhouettes, I create a new urban landscape of overlapping scenes which serve as a metaphor for the citys own growth. The
translucent silhouettes are put up and photographed, and soon removed
from the window. Second, the compiled translucent silhouettes of skyscrapers are turned into the shapes of dying birds. I witnessed that birds hit
the window of a building and died and suffered from the pollution made
by new urban constructions.