Value and Appearance of Observing Silence
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." ― Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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Tomorrowland, ballpoint pen
ink on book page, 8 1/4 x 6 3/4 in., 2014~2019. From the Book project series, Courtesy of the artist |
For a stylistic analysis and iconographic interpretation, I have placed Lee’s art in the cultural realm of anthropology, and more particularly in a home/family context where it participates in visual communication. Her artistic treatment and transformation of the human figure leads to images that resemble low-relief carvings and finely incised scenes.
The shape of the figures and the outer contour of the face are echoed in a series of concentric edges which radiate outward from the center; the lower edge of images depicts a single ground line. While detail has been eliminated and narrative abridged or at least channeled, this works to highlight a lively shape and imperative body gestures. The group of works are identified as forming a system of visual contemplation.
Lee remarks "I want to take a deep breath in the country of freedom. In the country of freedom, I want to escape the embarrassment of real society. In the country of freedom, I want to find the person I want to be. Is it okay? Is it really possible? Yes, just be the original you." [2]
In her Home series, Lee stacks the memories of life, discovers the rituals of life, and develops the inner energy. She roots the work in a concept of "home" as people seeking a space in which the soul should not be afraid and not be lonely. Therefore, when the audience walks up to the piece that she constructed, it can experience, in both body and mind simultaneously, a calm, inward space.
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Home project (2012~Now) , Searching for spiritual home series (Berkeley and San Francisco), dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist. Home is a place of spiritual and physical protection. People have always wanted to know how to establish a harmonious home, but the search invariably involves a long, drawn-out process with its own memories of time that force us to reconsider the relationship between people and home. |
For her “Book project,” Lee chooses books by authors from past ages. What she is curious about is how books communicate with people today after a considerable time has passed since they were written. She accords priority to a type of "linear reading", which is through the image, lines, and light with wind to arrange a space that can dialogue with viewers. When the wind blows the pages, they are opened for reading, and a societal phenomenon and value viewpoint is released. She makes full use of visual symbols appended to the texts in parallel to the contents. When we open the book page, it shows mirror reflections corresponding each to the other. In some works she uses both Chinese and English language books to create a conversation. Most of her works present images that carry a concept of “time” and “memory”. When we turn the page, it is similar to opening a memory.
The works in the Search for spiritual home series, often grotesque in appearance, seem to represent a shaman’s power spirit. There is no decoration, but a strong symbolic indication of ritual, emblem, and a secret society inhabited by spirits. The anthropomorphic figures on the wall seem to be a mixture of human and effigy serving as ceremonial symbols.
The light background color creates a negative form next to the figure pattern. As has been remarked in another context, “sometimes this negative form can be read as a positive form creating an ambiguity between figure and ground. This reversal of figure and background is common in Kwakiutl art.” [3] Ritual, although sometimes irrational, affords security and provides an order to the chaos of life. We may say "in visual arts, rituals also surround each work, marking key points in the creative process, as well as in its exhibition, viewing, and discourses on signification." [4] One might say that Lee invented a ritual: reading as a means of remembering. Lee constantly uses signifiers to construct her work and extend the viewer's imagination. We find many shapes - from houses to bottles - in her works to project the idea of containers that can protect our existence, provide a healing place and power of story transferred. The rice paper she likes to use is very thin, fragile, and easily damaged - and thus a perceptive metaphor for our lives. Further, making art with such delicate materials requires slow deliberation and careful attention to detail, as does living daily life. In this way, value and appearance resonate one with the other.
Her installations are site-specific works that change the space to a transition of mind and home. She combines clues, beams, energy, light and shadow, and connections, and also guides the audience to watch and find directions. Lee emphasizes the connections between history and memory of the location that could be your village, community or city. The line is an element that allows the artist to connect the history and memory of her audience with herself. This line constitutes the form and the past of the previous "home”. In terms of structure, it shares an awareness with architecture, and she also hopes to use these clues to make people explore the past, and then to further look at the relationship between her inner home and the creative home.[5]
Lee said her work is inspired by calligraphy, indigenous culture, and
ceramics. Her flat black silhouette painting style has the feeling of thick
calligraphy. The sculptural nature of pottery and porcelain makes her thinking
more three-dimensional, an outlook seen notably on a series of outdoor
billboards. The visual images, inseparable from her signature black symbols,
are the conduits and reflections of her artistic intuition. Rising directly
from her unconscious, they are thus internalized into a kind of insight and
presented.
What is "reasonable" and "normal" in our society is not necessary so in another. [6]"A means of heightening the difference between "ordinary" and the "strange" ,....related contradictions serves as an important impetus for artistic expression with artists seeking to create a sense of order (rationally, logically) out of conditions characterized more generally by features of confusion and contradiction."[7]
Lee writes words on the book-thick pages to express emotional communication with the author's work. In her view, the book carries the meaning of words, yet also the content and memories of the times. Reading is a mode and behavior of people's seeing. Through reading and paper transmission, people's stories and memories are evoked. The memory presented by humans is like the missing page. Through the visual reading of the artist exploring the extension of the paper after flipping, the audience creates visual language between viewing and staying between pages, and new content and multi-layered meanings are generated through time interlacing.
While Lee's art employs a discourse on allegorical and spiritual
interpretations to reveal a hidden meaning for modernity, the line-connected
symbols must be carefully interpreted to avoid being "conceived as
antithetical to the modernist credo Ill faut etre de son temps." [8].
She courageously transforms the most subjective to a objective
expression in which the verbal is expressed as visual.
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Right: Packaging, Ink on book page, 7 1/2 x 10 in., 2014~2019, Courtesy of the artist |
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Left: Boat and bike, ballpoint pen ink on book page, 7 1/2 x10 in., 2014~2019, Courtesy of the artist |
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| Book project series, ink on book page, 7 1/2 x10 in, 2014-2019 Courtesy of the artist |
