Lee Young Ho: Forced Rhythm
The exhibition presents not only photography but multi-media works, including film-looping machines, installations with Augmented Reality and film mobiles by Lee Young Ho, who has consistently paid attention to how optical media and its devices visually engage with cinematography.
The mechanical sound at regular intervals produced by the film machine in the space reminds visitors of the metronome’s noise or music performed by an orchestra according to a conductor’s direction; in this context, the title, 'Forced Rhythm', indicates the sound of a regulated pitch played by force. This constant rhythm enables separate works to synchronize in the exhibition, and ultimately, it lets them be multi-dimensional parts of massive devices. By paying attention to organically moving kinetic films, diffractive light, and rhythmical patterns of a projector, Lee encourages the viewers to seek sentiments indwelling machines and establish dynamics between their own selves and these machines.
The exhibition is a metaphor describing the qualities of screening. In this context, Lee attempts to switch the entire space into a continually shifting space depending on the movements of the audience inflow instead of maintaining a hazy nostalgia of conventional theatre experience. Besides the kinetic film installations, Flip Flap Loco (2021), the AR piece constructing a virtual place of three-dimensional graphics, allows the viewers to have their extended radius by looking for objects hidden in virtual reality. Accordingly, they play an active part in setting up their dynamics with the machines; in the end, they are able to experience a multi-layered interpretation of the exhibition and their intensified senses. On the other hand, her media practice features the current condition in which highly advanced AR technology has developed night vision on the battlefield; the fact that AR was initially invented as a monitor installed onto a helmet for military purposes. It shows that the artist has carefully observed how the nature of demand for optical media has changed from a source of entertainment in its early stage to military hardware, depending on the advance of technology.
Through Mobile (2022), the work displayed in the window gallery, Lee designs it sensitively to respond to an unstable state of equilibrium and gravitational force by dissembling a projector into a roll of film, a roller and a speaker and hanging them with wire. Maintaining the inherently precarious balance, each part of the installation connected by a grid relies on each other and generates a sense of free-fall; it returns to reply on its organizational pivot, the objects of the projector. The whole design refers to the organic mechanism that a slight separation between the film and the roller can cause a fatal malfunction in the system. Through diverse approaches for such re-contextualization, including recombining the original mechanism of a film projector, breaking up devices, and newly juxtaposing the fragments, Lee suggests that the spectators spontaneously find their appropriate speeds for appreciating the works in response to her films, structures and AR pieces.
Lee Young Ho (b.1979) received a Meisterschüler at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Based on Korea and Germany, she has had her solo exhibitions at Platform-L Contemporary Art Center (2022, 2021), Gallery Damdam (2019), Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien (2019), John Doe Gallery (2018), RU Space (2017) and Alternative Space Loop (2009). She also has participated in numerous group exhibitions at several prestigious art expositions and establishments, such as Cemeti-Institute for Art and Society (2021), Jimei X Arles International Photos Festival (2018), Asia Culture Center (2015) and Daegu Art Museum (2012).
