Argentine Lee

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Argentine Lee
1975 Busan (South Korea),

Gyu Sik AHN, Curator of Busan Museum of Modern Art Argentinelee − A metaphor of inversion to the "fragility "

The works by Argentine Lee have been expressed the problem of present technological environment comparing to the relationship of a strong man and weak man with new media such as computer, digital video and digital sounds. The (Collective Projection) in this exhibition is a work of same context and observes various meaning derived from inserting audience and art work. A thousand of dishes on the floor that begin from the entrance can be seen at a glance. There is writing on the dented surface of each dish. It looks like a name. Over the dished, there are sixteen TV monitors put on the inner area of exhibition hall with regular intervals and rough breathings of naked people of various races and sex can be seen from the monitor. These arrangements of dishes and images are quite unnatural and it is because the connection of two mediums is not easily captured and it generously gives a feeling of oppression. The sounds of step on the dishes walking through to the inside of exhibition hall increase the curiosity about the artist´s intention. On the other hands, the naked images of TV monitor stopped rough breathing and stay in the calmness armed with iron armor. The transforms of monitor images are repeated periodically according to a certain flow.

It seems that the artist intends to step on the dishes to see the image of TV. The audiences are very careful when they enter the entrance but soon they are accustomed to step on the dishes. One question is coming out here. Why the names are written on the dishes that will be broken? (It is easily noticed that the writings are names of people). It is known that the artist wants to give a life to dishes by naming (it is a name of existing person printed on the transparent tape) each one from the interview with the artist. In other words, she treated dishes as a existence of man character rather than a thing and she wants to express functional relation between the action of stepping and breaking , and stepped and broken. The functional relation is probably the relationship between a weak man and a strong man, in other words it is a relationship between a force and pain. She put the audience on the strong side and the dishes on the weak side. Therefore she wants to make people who have been lived without a consideration to the weak person experience how the force of strong man affects to the weak person. She exposed a vital part of present society. It is a problem about the isolation of individuals that experiences in the group and it is unexposed but more serious problem of current society. The darkness after the post industrial society such as moral slackness, absence of tradition, lost of identity by them, break of mutual trust and ferocity of the capitalism leads a person to the sealed closet. She shows this extreme individual situation through the image of people armed with iron armor. Naked people show the life activity without slip on anything. They confirm their life breathing roughly as if they don´t aware of the existence of others but soon they hear other´s breathing and start to aware their freedom is interrupted. As that awareness is getting closer, they operate the mechanism to instinctively protect themselves. With the shut of protecting layer, their freedoms are locked in the silence like the grave. The artist produces our reality like a play on the stage by repeatedly showing this process. However this work that shows the irrationality of present society requests a new inversion instead of staying as a tragic drama. The inversion is a recovery to the relationship that can be trust each other, in other words, a recovery of humanity.

Gyu Sik AHN, Curator of Busan Museum of Modern Art, 2004

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