Argentinelee

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 of Argentine Lee have previously expressed the problem with the present technological environment, comparing the relationship of a strong man and a weak man to new media, such as the computer, digital video, and digital sound. The Collective Projection in this exhibition works within the same context and observes the various meaning derived from the audience into the artwork. A thousand dishes covering the floor by the entrance can be seen at a glance. There is writing, perhaps a name, on the dented surface of each dish. Above the dishes, there are sixteen television monitors, displaying the jagged breathing of nude people of various races and genders. Alternatively, the images on the screen stop their labored breathing and suddenly clad in iron armor. The transformation of the images is repeated periodically during the exhibition. This arrangement of dishes and images is quite unnatural and it is precisely due to this uneasily captured connection of two mediums that the work conveys a feeling of oppression. Making one´s way through the exhibition hall, the sound of broken dishes being crushed underfoot can be heard, further increasing one´s curiosity in the artist´s intentions. It would seem that the artist means for the audience to walk over the broken dishes in order to see the television screens. Visitors are cautious as they first enter but soon grow accustomed to the unruly path.

One question arises; why are there names written on plates that are about to be broken? The artist makes it known that she intends to give life to each dish by naming them. In other words, she treats the dishes as a human character rather than an object, wishing to express the functional relationship between the action of stepping and breaking, and being stepped on and broken. The relationship appears to be one between a strong man and a weak man, as well as one between force and pain. She places the audience in the position of the strong role while placing the dishes in the position of the weak. This purposeful placement makes people who have previously failed to consider the weak person´s experience realize just how the dominance of the strong affects the weak. In fact, Argentine Lee exposes a vital societal problem, a problem concerning the isolation that individuals experience within a group. The dark issues that blanketed post−Industrial society, such as moral laxity, absence of tradition, loss of identity, the breakdown of mutual trust, and the ferocity of capitalism all lead an individual to seal himself away. Argentine Lee shows this extreme situation through the image of people in iron armor. The nude people lay bare the verity of life activity and confirm their own existence through their rough breathing, as if at first they are not cognizant of the existence of others. But they soon hear others breathing and become aware of their interrupted freedom.

As that awareness closes in on them, they instinctively activate the mechanism to protect themselves. Shut within the shielding armor, their freedoms are locked in silence as if in a grave. By repeatedly showing this process on screen, the artist stage-manages reality, as though we are all a part of a play. This work demonstrates the irrationality of present day society. However, rather than remain a tragic drama of human life, it demands an inversion of perception. The inversion would show the recovery of a relationship of trust in one another, that is to say, the recovery of humanity.

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

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