Jaewook Lee

2008-2016
Becoming-Earth

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 producer of art objects, but a mediator or curator 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: Jaewook Lee X Everyday Practice X Space ONewWall

Jaewook Lee(artist) X Everyday Practice(designer) X Space ONewWall(-

Media: Multimedia installatoin

gallery) brings together watercolor drawings, installation, natural objects,

Size: 20 x 20 x 13 feet

designed posters that show the coherent relationship among the artist, the

Year: 2016

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
research, select (ready-made), appropriate, experiment, contextualize, cooperate, run budgets, and make connections together.

Title: Less is Known on Earth

Less is Known on Earth is an interdisciplinary installation project that

Media: Multimedia installation and perfomance

explores the relationship between the Earth itself and the way that our

Size: 33 x 33 x 13 feet

mind projects meanings onto it. The project presents objects on Earth back

Performance duration: 01:00:00

in question, revealing their irreducible qualities beyond our comprehen-

Year: 2015

sion. The premises are to think about the Earth as a living organism, and to

Installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/123510391

grasp the earths perspective to look at the world. It broadens the subject of
art more worldly, including the world of something- other-than-humans.
The installation brings together objects made out of science books, natural
objects, and a live performance that reflect the enigmatic qualities of things
on Earth. The entire exhibition floor is lit by red and blue grow lights under
which objects are dispersedly placed for the audience to wander around.
People walk, see, smell, examine, and read as if they landed onto another
planet where art and science, disorder and order, and chaos and reason
intersect with each other.

Title: When All Things Evaporate, Well Talk About Minerals

When All Things Evaporate, Well Talk About Minerals is a one-night event

Media: Multimedia installation and perfomance

focusing on the interaction between man, nature, and culture, and the ways

Size: 49 x 49 x 16 feet

in which participants aspire the unknown and the uncertain beyond the

Performance duration: 02:00:00

imaginable. This show takes the human body as object/subject and natural

Year: 2014

objects as substance/projected meanings. The body of work is divided into

Installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/107854887

two parts: nature before the imprinting of human marks and construction

*a colloboration with choreographer Simon Couto

of language and after. With various co-operants whose identities are multiplied in networks, Minerals presents various live performances among
natural objects. The performers re-establish new relationships as they
constantly act together with each other, with all the other objects and the
audience. The show is a performative and collective endeavor.

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

Performance duration: 01:00:00

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

Year: 2014

something unstable that continues to change through human intervention,

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

rather than something fixed and universal, and pays 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: Nothing But A Symphony

This imaginative musical performance is interfered by the juxtaposition

Media: Single-channel video with sound

with jellyfish. Since the jellyfishs lively movement looks similar to the

Duration: 04:30

cellists body, Lees invisible musical act appears a bodily vibration. There

Year: 2014

is a doubling here. The cellists body structurally avoids being seen clearly

Single-channel video: https://vimeo.com/104112703

determinable because of its double presence as subject and object. She is

not only a subject because she consciously plays the invisible cello, but also
an object because it is seen as a bodily fluctuation like jellyfish. Her body is
not just the sign of a musical performance, but also a thing of flesh quivers.

Nothing But A Symphony is a single-channel video which sees the world

Finally, the primary colors that include red, yellow, blue, black, and white,

as vibrating melodies in unison. The Korean top cellist Jungran Lee plays

add richer rhythmical vibrancies to the video. The colors are different

an invisible cello in concert with jellyfish and primary colors, creating a

wavelengths of light. The flow of light is actualized into certain colors

rhythmical harmony of Nature: the cellist, the jellyfish, and the primary

through our eyes. In this sense, we experience vibrations in visual forms.

colors appear and re-appear respectively on the timeline of the video,

We perceive the vibrancies of the colors, hear the invisible rhythm of a

creating a cadence. This arrangement between human and non-human

cello, and observe the tremors of jellyfishes in a balanced cadence. That

performances levels the subject-object relationship through a non-an-

is to say, the cellist, the jellyfish, and the primary colors create a musical

thropocentric point of view.

harmony together, offering the inter-sensorial experience: it is a symphony

of multi-sensations by both the human and the non-human actors.

Cellist Lee focuses on how to perform imagination: she explores how to

sense things not from external stimuli but through intensive imagination
and association in both visual and auditory levels. In the video, Lee plays
the air-cello by remembering a piece of music. She uses her memory
of the music to activate the action of playing the cello, and the action retroactively helps stimulate her auditory memory.

Title: Sense (avscularemain)

Sense (avasularemain) is a collaborative project by Jaewook Lee and Ali

Media: Video installation and performance with scented plants

Van. This project includes the participation of the audiences to experience

Installaion size: 8 x 8 x 8 feet

how scents affect our mind and mood. People are asked to sit down while

Performance duration: 01:00:00

closing their eyes. They hear a voice-over of reading an excerpt from Andr

Year: 2014

Bretons Mad Love, a surrealist book that shows love as an enigmatic place

Single-channel video: https://vimeo.com/182322250

and the marvelous encounters with ordinary things. When the audiences

* a colloboration with Ali Van

listen to the audio-play, they smell a series of scented plants that are delivered to their noses. People listen, imagine, smell, and change their mood in
concert with scented plants.

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: 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.