LEE JINHAN I E AT I VO M I T
LEE JINHAN I E AT I VO M I T
I EAT I VOMIT
Lee Jinhan’s expressive abstract paintings depar t from the challenge between the Renaissance perspectives and abstract modernist paintings. Lee’s joyful layers of painterly surfaces display both spontaneous fluidity with delicate moderation. She playfully sweeps across the canvas with diverse ar tistic medium such as oil paints, fluorescent spray paints and glitters with captivating colours to create the subtle disorientation between abstract and figuration and two dimension and three dimension bringing the continuous to-and-fro reaction within. By strategically merging two chronically different ideas of representation - Renaissance perspective representation as illusions of reality and flat Modernist abstract representation as an object of itself – she allows the disparate spaces and time to coexist on the surfaces creating linear relationships. The layers of paints cease to exist in their chronological order breaking the continuity of time and space allowing all to exist in one moment in time. Lee’s most recent works displayed in this exhibition show her gradual development on her subject matter – from the abstract landscape to an open ended abstract environment incorporating figurative references from the popular culture as Korean pop music (K-Pop), internet car toons and literatures. Especially in an age when the mass media plays a significant role in creating human consciousness, these uncontrollable amount of ephemeral representations and metaphors shown in contemporary culture are also one form of abstraction – as she comments on the K-pop industry and music in Electric Shock (2012) and NUABO (2012). The ar tist employs perplex yet wondrous images through literality to depict this abstractness embedded in the society and the language. In these, she toys with images, languages, contexts and their interdependent relationship analogous to the postmodernists’ non-narrative play of detached signifiers in constructing a unique pictorial language. Yet, refraining from deconstructing the context and minimising her subjective influence she allows interpretive cues for the audience to decipher and to create the meaning at their perusal. Regardless of the original functional and the metaphorical meaning, in paintings as Volcano Duck and Three Moo Boxes (2012), she produces ambiguous and incongruent context through the literal conversion of the language into the image. The complex entanglement of the metaphorical contexts becomes blurred and the boundary between the sign, the signifier and the signified becomes obscured.
Big Fish | oil and glitter on canvas | 180 x 140 cm | 2012
02 | 03
In 2010, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker introduced the term metamodernism alternative to postmodernism that fails to situate or explain the current state of affairs. It is typified by a continuous oscillation, a constant repositioning between attitudes that are evocative of the modern and of the postmodern but are ultimately suggestive of another sensibility that is neither of them. In Lee’s pictorial universe, she not only oscillates between modernism and postmodernism but fur ther back to Renaissance by successfully creating a new visual language without nihilation or objection to the past. She endeavours for the reconciliation to create alternative narrative rather than to re-construct through deconstruction. Just like Plato’s metaxy (in-between), she skilfully remains in the pocket universe pushing the opposite poles to the beyond. Lee Jinhan’s paintings are past, present and future - all at the same time. This is just what makes Lee’s paintings so different, so appealing.
Lee Jinhan (b.1982) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. She received MFA at Goldsmiths and Central Saint Mar tins, London after achieving BFA at Hongik University, Seoul. Lee has exhibited widely in UK and Korea. Most recently she has been shor tlisted for Saatchi Gallery New Sensation 2012 and she has been selected as finalist for Gallery Loop Young Ar tist Competition 2011, Seoul, 33rd Joongang Fine Ar t Competition, Seoul and Guasch Conranty Prize 2010, Barcelona.
I Eat I Vomit | oil, acr ylic and glitter on canvas | 220 x 160 cm | 2012 04 | 05
Har uki Book | oil and spray paint on linen | 200 x 180 cm | 2012
06 | 07
Volcano Duck and Three Moo Boxes | oil and spray paint on linen | 200 x 180 cm | 2012
08 | 09
McDonalds | oil and spray paint on linen | 200 x 200 cm | 2012
10 | 11
Dancing | oil and spray paint on linen | 170 x 130 cm | 2012
06 12 | 07 13
Electric Shock | oil and spray paint on linen | 200 x 170 cm | 2012
14 | 15
Juggling Man | oil and spray paint on linen | 200 x 180 cm | 2012
16 | 17
NUABO | oil, spray paint and glitter on linen | 220 x 160 cm | 2012
18 | 19
Arrrr | oil, acr ylic and spray paint on canvas | 110 x 100 cm | 2012
20 | 21
Tongue Olympics | oil and spray paint on linen | 92 x 112 cm | 2012
22 | 23
Rainbow Eyes | oil on canvas | 50.5 x 40.5 cm | 2012
Untitled | oil and spray paint on canvas | 51 x 51 cm | 2012
Untitled | oil and acr ylic on canvas | 50.5 x 40.5 cm | 2012
24 | 25
v
LEE JINHAN
(b. 1982)
EDUCATION
WHITE GOODS, Stroud House gallery, Stroud, UK
2012 MFA Fine Ar t at Goldsmiths, London, UK
Central Saint Mar tins MA Interim Show 08, Barge House, OXO Tower
2008 MA Fine Ar t at Central Saint Mar tins, London, UK
Wharf, London, UK
2006 BFA Painting at Hongik University, Seoul, Korea AWARDS SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012 Shor tlist for New Sensation, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2012 I EAT I VOMIT, HADA Contemporary, London, UK
2011 Finalist for Gallery Loop Young Ar tist Competition, Gallery Loop, Seoul,
2012 Postmodernism of the Beholder - Landscape of the Concept, Gallery Loop, Seoul, Korea 2009 BEYOND AND WITHIN, Gallery Muse at 269, London, UK
Korea Finalist for 33rd Joongang Fine Ar t Competition, Seoul, Korea Finalist for I AM SOLITARY, LONDON, Beers, Lamber t Contemporary Ar t, London, UK
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2012 Saatchi New Sensation, Victoria House, London, UK
2010 Finalist for 2010 Guasch Conranty Prize, Fundación Guasch Coranty, Barcelona, Spain
2011 Embracing the Void, HADA Contemporary, London, UK 33rd Joongang Fine Ar t Competition Selected Ar tists’ Show, Seoul Ar ts Center, Seoul, Korea
PROJECT
I AM SOLITARY - LONDON, curated by Beers. Lamber t Contemporary Ar t,
2009 DIALOGUE BOX: BEYOND AND WITHIN, AirSpace Gallery, Stroke on
Gift at 10 Vyner St. Gallery, London, UK 2010 FUTURE FUTURES FUTURE, Korean Cultural Centre UK, London, UK Core Gallery Open Submission Exhibition for Depford X, Core gallery, Deptford, London, UK Guasch Coranty Painting Prize Selected Ar tists’ Show, Center of Ar t Tecla Sala, Barcelona, Spain Open Painting, Royal West England Academy, Bristol, UK 4482: Korean Contemporary Ar tist in London, Barge House, OXO Tower Wharf, London, UK Project Space: PRINT NOW, London Ar t Fair, Design Centre, London —MAY 2010, BEARSPACE, London, UK 2009 Raymond Gun: Platform, Degreear t.com gallery, London, UK Gathering Storm, Bayfield Hall, Norfolk, UK 2008 Improvisation, Newdays gallery, London, UK Chorus Project, Hun gallery, New York, Korus House, Embassy of republic of Korea, Washington DC, US 4482: Korean Contemporary Ar tist in London, Barge House, OXO Tower Wharf, London, UK Central Saint Mar tins MA Degree Show 08, Central Saint Mar tins College of Ar t and Design, London, UK
Trent, UK
This catalogue is published by HADA Contemporary to accompany the exhibition:
LEE JINHAN I EAT I VOMIT 6 DECEMBER 2012 - 31 JANUARY 2013 Š HADA Contemporary Ltd. 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers
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