Summer 2008 Artist:
Jeesoo Lee

With x, mixed media installation, 17 x 12 x 9 feet, 2008

Jeesoo Lee is a South Korean artist based in Brooklyn who recently completed her MFA at SUNY in New Paltz, NY. Lee's current work is a response to the aftermath of natural disasters. This body of work began after visiting a site struck by Hurricane Katrina. Lee noticed a sudden vision of emptiness in the landscapes left by Katrina. Later this vision was reinforced after reading Julia Kristeva's seminal work on the subject of abjection. As the artist would describe,"beauty of another kind, destruction."

Untitled, mixed media, 9x6 inches, 2008

Lee weaves string and discarded objects to form abstracted architectural wall-scapes. Her process involves plucking, piercing, ripping, and scratching materials in order to accelerate their decay. The debris in her work speaks as much to the society that existed before a calamity as it does to the forces that tore it apart. This new landscape is one that is tragic and difficult to comprehend. Depictions of a natural disaster share a common attribute of Lee's work that is the dislocated objects of daily life. It is through witnessing the power of nature that we experience awe; in this way Jeesoo Lee's work is a reinterpretation of the sublime.

After, mixed media drawing, 32x24 (inches), 2008

The work of Jeesoo Lee breaks down our resistance to destruction by reformulating fragments into new compositions. Her work appears to preserve the presence of society by collecting and collaging the debris of the everyday and transforming it into massive installations that carry the eye across, beside, and inside the work.

-Baseera Khan, Gallery Manager

Untitled for abjection, mixed media installation, 22x18x8 feet, 2006