JAEHYO LEE
Solo exhibition
July 11 - August 25, 2013
In the Gyeonggi Province, where he lives, in the south of Seoul, the forest and the Han River are never far away. The subject of nature is central to the art of Lee Jae Hyo. It is the energy of nature, the uncluttered lines and the simplicity of its elements, which informs his works. It is fundamental to Lee Jae Hyo that the hand follows the essence of the material, working with it with it not against. The material guides the gesture and the texture decides the form. Lee Jae Hyo shares a great respect for raw materials but also a will to dominate what nature has provided. His wood-on-wood combinations read as playful meditations on the multifaceted nature of the material itself. What unites his works is a belief that the beauty of art is a product of the labour from whence it came, whether this be the meticulous carving of larch trunks into the form of a perfect sphere or, equally, the precise bending and sanding of thousands of nails hammered one after another into a hunk of cut lumber.
Jaehyo Lee completes the natural beauty of the Asia through the transformation the natural materials. Jaehyo Lee wants the audience to only get the message from his work where the work and himself are separated, so his works are easy for everyone to from an empathy. Table and chair showing cross-section of a tree and a sculpture made by bending a small nail gives us a familiar shape without changing the nature of the materials. Jaehyo Lee is success in a way how the natural materials come to our lives and creates an empathy.
Jaehyo Lee’s works willfully play with the oft-contested boundaries between modern art and design, referencing the idealist´s cubes, cylinders and cones as perversions of the chaise longue, the coffee table, the lampshade, and even the humble doughnut Revealing a subtly humorous and unsentimental attitude to nature, what unites these works is a belief that the beauty of art is a product of the labor from whence it comes, whether this be the meticulous carving of larch trunks into the form of a perfect sphere or, equally, the precise bending and sanding of thousands of nails hammered one after another into a hunk of cut lumber. Through this exhibition, we will be able to feel the infinite possibilities of life and nature.