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| [ Peres Projects - Paul Lee/KOO, LEE, CHUNG] |
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By Boris Pofalla
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bio
Flasher contributor Boris Pofalla attended the Peres Project opening night for the showing of works by the New York-based British artist Paul Lee and Korean artists Donghee KOO, Suejin CHUNG and Dongwook LEE.
Dongwook LEE, Donghee KOO, Suejin CHUNG: Disturbed: New Art from Korea
November 23 - January 19, 2008
Opening November 23rd, 2007
Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 6 pm and by appointment
Peres Projects is pleased to present "Disturbed: New Art from Korea," featuring works by Donghee KOO, Suejin CHUNG and Dongwook LEE.
In his recent film The Host, Korean director Bong Joon-ho uses the form of the monster movie ala Godzilla to expose us to a world disconnected from history and tradition, a world caught up in corruption, rapid technological change and grotesque absurdity where every individual must fend for themselves or be eaten alive. In other words, a world not unlike our own.
In the work of the three Korean artists, Donghee KOO, Suejin CHUNG and Dongwook LEE we're presented with the banal and the mundane, yet with an undercurrent of violence and repression and an absurdity that, the closer you look for meaning or a simple explanation, the more it's evaded.
In her video works Donghee KOO uses cinematic techniques, inviting the viewer to search for a narrative that isn't there. Instead of a story we find ourselves reflected back, such as in Overloaded Echo, 2006. Referencing snuff videos from Iraq, we find ourselves both spinning aimlessly in a circle like the nude, masked protagonist and looking on in voyeuristic horror, bemusement, embarrassment or indifference, like those seated at the table waiting for something to happen.
Suejin CHUNG gives us a similar experience in her multi-layered paintings. She uses bright and concrete imagery to evoke memory, observed reality and dreams in a unique visual language. In People in Landscape, 2007 she populates a landscape with repeated figures and strange objects seemingly disconnected from each other and occupying various pictorial spaces. The imagery seems very familiar, yet she disrupts our expectations for what these people or objects could mean.
Dongwook LEE's miniature sculptures bring a feeling of fascination and perhaps repulsion in their highly detailed violence. In Handle, 2007, nude and anonymous bodies are bound together as the handle for a traditional sword. History and dehumanizing violence are brought together, making us think of the faceless masses instrumentalized for war and destruction. Like KOO and CHUNG, LEE gives us no explanation, just possibilities.
Disturbed: New Art from Korea will be on view at Peres Projects II (Schlesische Strasse 26, Berlin) through January 19, 2008.
For further information or reproductions please contact Margherita Belaief at Margherita@PeresProjects.com or +49 30 6162 6962.
Paul LEE: Harbour
November 23 - January 19, 2008
Paul LEE
HARBOUR
November 23, 2007 – January 19, 2008
Opening Friday, November 23, 2007, 7 – 10 pm
Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 6 pm and by appointment
Press Release
Javier Peres is pleased to present "Harbour," the first Berlin solo exhibition by New York-based British artist Paul LEE.
Projected in the first gallery as viewers enter the exhibition is a video work made during the artist's residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. A photocopy of a boy's idyllic face (adhered to a window) occupies the entire frame, but, where the boy's eyes should be, LEE has cut away a rectangular strip revealing moving footage of a freight train as it passes 'through' the boy's face from engine to caboose. The still portrait thus becomes a meta-screen on which plays a familiar scene of the man-made.
From cut-up portraits to frayed towel seams framing nothing, themes of misplaced and displaced desire are constant. LEE's sculptural works collapse the prioritization of basic forms with a conceptual investigation of natural elements, physical effects, and primal human interplay with both. The artist works with a slowly growing lexicon of materials – some referring to neo-dada and pop forbears (light bulbs, sea-sponges, soda cans, magnifying glasses), others more banal (towels, pillows, sacks, socks) – to create work for the wall, the floor and sometimes both at once.
The repeated plaster cast of a single rock acts as least common denominator: a spec of dirt, an atom, a dense black volume. From here LEE expands into his select group of building blocks to consider and reconsider the potential within the set: the value of the light bulb as it morphs from a buoyant container of air into a source of light – then into the shattered remains of both; the towel as absorbing agent, as counterpart to human skin, then as subject to cement-imposed rigor mortis.
A fixed color palette enters the scheme as an additional variable: muted reds and blues yield muddy purples, yellow is warmth, black is the void, blue liquefies and stains. Meanwhile the constant – and often pastel – punctuation of verticals and horizontals recalls a longstanding, sentimental tradition of seascapes and landscapes (LEE began his career in Cape Cod's Provincetown, where he continues to show annually).
Paul LEE (b. 1974, London) lives and works in New York and will be present for the opening.
He earned a B.F.A. from the Winchester School or Art, England. Recent exhibitions include a solo show, "Resevoir" at Massimo Audiello, New York and the School House Gallery in Provincetown, MA, both in 2006. Paul LEE's works have been included in numerous group shows, including "Eliminate," curated by John Waters at Alberta Merola Gallery, Provincetown, MA (2007); "This is Not Called Gay Art Now," curated by Jack Pierson at Paul Kasmin, New York, NY (2006) and "Hung, Drawn, and Quartered," Team Gallery, New York, NY (2004).
"Harbour" will be on view at Peres Projects (Schlesische Str. 26, 10997 Berlin) through January 19, 2008. Opening hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 AM – 6:00 pm and by appointment. For further information or reproductions please contact Margherita Belaief (margherita@peresprojects.com, +49 30 6162 6962).
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http://www.peresprojects.com
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