The Digital Baroque Spirit
Chan Woong Lee
Department of Philosophy, Ewha Women's University
Ye Seung Lee's works are experienced yet not easily perceived. Her works provide the material for a wonderful experience. Objects are superposed in imagery, color and sound is distinct to the ear, and light and shadow intertwine. Once discovered, we are already placed in the middle of the space it occupies. Like an amusement park, her works call us into a space of fascination and play. But it is so strange; when departing her work, it is unclear what it is that we have seen. Was it landscape? Electrical multi-plugs? What remains in our heads is only partial. This is not an issue of contemporary art and its dismissal of consistency, or digital media being in essence fragmented.
Somewhere Between Reality and Illusion Lee endlessly absorbs, overturns, and scatters. She will not hesitate to absorb the sources of her production; continuously overturns boundaries of the interior and exterior; and commands both the exquisite and the bold when installing her objects and images. In short, rather than to take out, she will put in. While some discard half of the paper, she folds it, and folds it again, only to open it in her own unique way. Unless one tracks the complexity of the folded lines, it becomes difficult to perceive her work. The contemplation and energy spent on the production is hidden somewhere beneath the curves and is reluctant to come forth. Lee's work is synthesized as various types of conflicting lines intersect. There is at least a fourfold in conflict. On the surface, it is the contrast between art and technology. In the west, quantum theory was divided into play and principle after the 18th century. However, as Heidegger pointed out in a timely fashion, poiesis contains the meaning of production and embraces quantum theory. So in a way, Ye Seung Lee is an artist of production. She will station objects of technology inside the image to deny exclusivity in artistic activity, but simultaneously manage to restore technology at its core. Furthermore, when it seems that the tables have turned for art and technology, she will push her limits a little further. For instance, you will find her using electric wires as drawing lines. The second point of Lee's work lies in the tension between Asian art and digital media. The cylindrical screen in her workspace appears to be a scroll made out of rice paper. To see moving objects or scenery on it, we are taken way back in time, fulfilling the dream of an artist hundreds of years ago to bring life onto the page. One of our ancestors once said, the sound of the waterfall in a picture on the wall was so loud he could not sleep. This is what makes Asian art so unique; it is different from the structure of western art, where digital media is only an extension of the flat canvas. While the audience reaches the media screen with a contemplative view, this artist's work creates space to divide the inside and outside. And the audience enters, from the outside in. A third point in Lee's work is the discrepancy between the compulsory and disposition. We all live with some compulsory demand, and the result is realized in the persona of others. But, as goes the origin of the word, it is only a mask, or image. On the other hand, disposition stubbornly works inside of us, in hiding. These two contradicting axes drive our lives, yet also meet at points to create an oval, and open up a creative space. Reflecting on the artist's private life history, this discrepancy combines with the conflict. Lastly, reality and illusion is impossible to discern. This is the reason for Lee's infinite proliferation of images. Lee's previous work, "A Wild Rumor" (group exhibition at xLoop, 2013) closely resembles this one and is also representative of Lee's art. The audience gets to see images from inside the screen. The object's reality in contrast to the image is not what is outside the cylindrical screen first, and then confirms the source of these images statio important here. Lee hopes to situate the audience in between the discrepancy of the image and object, in itself. As aesthetic as images are, objects represent science, and as the former appear depending on light, the latter are symbols of solid, scientific law. The artist uses this gap to lure the audience into this contemplative experiment. Though objects may appear more real in comparison to images, those objects may also be mere images of another reality, on another level. Lee tries to expose the fundamental impossibility of perception, its fate for error. Ultimately, it will be impossible to discern between illusion and reality, image and object. This is the core of what Chuang-tzu said in the 'Butterfly Dream (胡蝶之夢),' what Deleuze said about the crystal-image. Lee waged everything on this theme, and superimposes the three contrasting lines described earlier on top. Within the indiscernible, everything shifts and takes each other's place infinitely, like the Möbius strip. This is why it is so hard to know what is being perceived in Lee's work, with the ordinary eye and dichotomous thinking. Technological objects release the most artistic images, and art is reborn through the most advanced technology. The dream of Asian art is being realized through digital media, and the screen enters in its curved screen. More light will be shed upon the inner disposition, in contrast with compulsion of the exterior, but without a forced persona, it will not know just how to express oneself.
Digital Baroque
Lee's work today overlaps with her previous works. Again, she is an artist who continues to add on. This is not merely an accumulation in number, but causes significant reversal. "Moving Movements" seems to be a variation of "A Wild Rumor" through "The Spiritual Landscape of Doo Jung Hyun"(joint work, 2014). In short, if "A Wild Rumor" can be called the body, "Moving Movements" is the spirit. In the former, light and objects are exposed, but in the latter, the source of the image is concealed. In the former, the audience's gaze will trace the images and objects one by one, but in the latter, the audience sees the entire landscape instantly. Whereas a red beaker, like the heart, is pumping energy into all the objects and images in the former, in the latter, the central media tower is coldly controlling the projected surroundings. In the former, the audience experiences the pseudo-body created by objects, whereas in the latter, they are within the spirit surrounded by dream-images. The source of the image in "Moving Movements" seems somehow 'entangled' elsewhere. As Deleuze puts it, "the spirit is the exterior folded up and put inside." Was the artist able to achieve a production of the body in "A Wild Rumor," while discovering the inside of the mind in "Moving Movements?" Taken together, the artist seems to be unconsciously attracted to the production of life and machine within the construction work of space. Lee was influenced by Borges' short story, "The Circular Ruins," but she may be much closer to this literary world than she would like to admit. Both are closely connected to the reconstruction of space and the imaginary creation of the persona. We may confidently add Lee's work to the tradition of the digital baroque. Baroque's characteristic feature in art history is the infinite proliferation of images. In the flood of images by painting, sculpture and mirror, the distinction between objects and images becomes infinitely delayed or meaningless. Another key feature is that the trajectory of light itself is invisible. In Baroque architecture, light will make double of everything into images, but where this light comes from, its source itself is invisible. This is because the light that entered the building top is constantly refracted through the mirror and wandering throughout the building. This is why our age is often called the digital baroque. Images proliferate all the time through our digital devices, but we do not know where they come from. It is interesting to see how the artist uses light. She uses it in three different ways to create shapes, and the various experimental methods are clearly exposed. Light can create a semi-transparent shadow of an object, or project a reflection onto a screen, or calculate and convert a digital image through a computer. This is materialized as a shadow, on the screen, and in the media tower. We may call them chemical, optical, informative. The last of these was first introduced during this exhibit. The reason for this is important. It was to hide the source of the image, to reverse the inside and out. The interaction in the media tower serves as a symbol of the spirit or intellect of this day and age. It is hard to say whether we may call this a kind of artificial intelligence, or fantasy. By utilizing this indiscernibleness, Ye Seung Lee invites us into the spirit within the digital baroque, filled with informative image.
Press release courtesy Gallery Chosun.
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