Lee Seung Ae: Night Shade
Lee Seung Ae (b.1979) has preoccupied herself with the ‘Animation-Drawing’ series since her academic year at Royal College of Art (UK) in 2014 and showed an aesthetic process that a piece of paper evolves into an ingenious monochrome animation conveying mythical narratives through her authentic sense of imagination, meticulous plans, and a great deal of commitment.
This exhibition includes The Accidental Night (2019-20, 19min), Lee’s recent series which consists of drawings and animations based upon rubbing of textured surfaces that the artist newly adopted last year during the period of Chapter II Residency. It will offer spectators an opportunity to anticipate future artistic approaches and developments of the artist who has consistently established a ‘Visual Tale’ of infinite imagination by using simple materials, paper and pencil.
Fundamentally, The Accidental Nights is achieved by numerous attempts and trials of a performative act, as though Lee persistently applied and practiced a brass rubbing technique onto walls of a specific space where she frequently stayed in. Furthermore, the series is an outcome of Lee’s constant skeptical view on how shapes revealed through the repetitive action give her a sense of intimacy as if they had been inherently there in those configurations.
At first, Lee gained drawings on multiple pieces of paper by rubbing different sections of the walls, and she arbitrarily juxtaposed each paper regardless of its original position on the wall while the drawings maintained surficial traits of the walls’ texture. Lee drew images that she came up with or accidently encountered within a certain virtual background space constructed by the process. At some points, these images reproduced their shapes and presence by themselves, and eventually multiplied.
Minimizing intention of reproducing particular images, Lee gradually completes her practice by connecting coincidently found images. In this context, she treats and depicts the accidental traces discovered on the surfaces as if they were inevitably supposed to be there.
Once the accidental imageries are represented on paper, Lee re-employs them as principal elements of her animation works. Lee mentioned, “As if I illuminated a vast wall painting by flashing light in a dark cave, I wanted to recreate a split moment of discovering an illusionary surreal dimension transcending the accustomed world we are already aware of”.
The entire landscape built by brass-rubbing drawings and the faint images drifting on it look like shades shimmering in a dark night rather than figures being clearly detected in broad daylight. It is similar to experiences of identifying the external world through unusual and peculiar senses under a circumstance where a visual cognitive system does not properly operate due to the domination of modern rational paradigms. Lee’s pictorial experiments to seek out images which cross the border between concepts of coincidence and inevitability can be related to people’s anxiety caused by the recent outbreak of an unknown virus prevailing over today’s technical advances. In the situation of which the obscure fear towards the unidentified presence and its side effects increase, Lee Seung Ae’s practice suggests a new approach of accepting the ambiguity as a positive phenomenon instead of clinging to a dichotomous way of thinking which provides only two options, comprehending or incomprehending anonymous creatures surrounding our environment.
Lee Seung Ae (b.1979) currently lives and works in London and Seoul since she received a MA degree in Fine Art after graduating from Royal College of Art, London. She attained recognition in the internal art world since the beginning of 2000 by showing distinctive and imaginative drawings including her Monster Series introduced at Art Basel Switzerland in 2004. Recently, her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions such as those at Malborough Fine Art (2017); Korean Culture Centre UK (2018); Doosan Gallery (2011); Arario Gallery (2008). She also attended multiple international art events including Guangzhou Triennial 2012 and several group exhibitions at prestigious establishments such as Seoul Museum of Art, Ilmin Museum of Art, Coreana Art and Culture Complex Space C and Seoul Olympic Museum of Art.
