스킵네비게이션

Where Should We Go, 2019, Cement, marine debris, Domestic waste, Dimensions variable

LEE Seungsoo

Where Should We Go

❑ artist bio

Lee Seungsoo was born in 1977 in Jeju, lives and works in Jeju. He has MA in Sculpture from Sungsin Women’s University and BA in Fine Art from Jeju University in 2002. He had nine solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows. His works are included collections of Art Bank of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Jeju Museum of Art, Pohang Museum of Steel Art, etc.

❑ introduction

The artist has explored memories that are documented in old objects and essential quality of material he uses such as iron, copper, stainless steel, etc. he uses. In the exhibition, Object Left Behind (2018) at Culture Space Yang, the artist collected old, trashed objects such as rail ties from Samwoo shipyard, which was set up at Hwabook harbor in 2014 but closed-down now and turn the objects into an art. Through site-specificity embodied in the objects and what they documents, artist let us to look back new facts and historical meanings. Sumbi, Absence of Haenyeo-Time, Memory (2018-2019) at Kim Tchang Yeul Museum was an exhibition in which he has casted figure of worn out Haenyeo suit in the shape of the artist’s body to install at many core sites of redevelopment sprawling in Jeju and documented with video and photograph. In this exhibition, the artist attempted to presents so many stories within the subject of environmental issues while symbolically interpreting Haenyeo suit that contains past story of the sea, the foundation of their living with sympathy toward the materials.

Through this year’s Sea Art Festival, the artist reminds us once again of how humans are harming the nature and of current natural environmental issues that we need to face and resolve. If you get into the very center of Dadaepo Beach after walking along with its trail, you will find life-size standing figures scattered here. You can easily spot Lee Seungsoo’s group of figures from a far at the beach wide-open. They create an illusion as if there really are actual large group of people. Closer you get to the sculpture, you can feel the roughness of cement he used as material as it is and you can even find marine litter mixed with the cement hardened together. Using cement, a contrasting material to the nature stretched out before us, the figures discomfort us on one hand. These figures, without being able to harmonize with the nature, invoke regret as if it show a self-portrait of contemporaries and expresses directly the question on where indeed we, the human are headed.