Sung Jae Lee

Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

Artist statement

My artwork portrays the complexity of change in landscapes, places, and people via abstract and geometric shapes. No matter which medium I use, the work reflects my meticulosity and the final product displays the qualities of drawing. By using comfortable materials and media like nib pens, fabric, and animation, I connect and overlap fine lines to create impressions of a subject. Sometimes different moments are depicted in one project, while other times the focus is on physical and/or emotional distances, but mostly my work incorporates all of these ideas to some degree. A decade ago, I used animation to visualize scenery with the colors of seasonal changes by contrasting the overall shapes and details. Both the process and final products were a joy to me because while the videos were of relatively long duration (~30 minutes), the motions within them were slow and almost still. I was thrilled to see that people held their breath and kept watching them for a while. The series of and was an attempt to transform my creations from the digital to the real world with tangible materials to deliver personal stories about my journey to the US. The composition of a vertical strip on a color-field panel inspired me to re-create it with merchandise from posh LA shopping malls; I especially fell in love with laces and semi-transparent fabrics and used these as the foundational materials of the series. At the same time, while I strove to evoke the sense of motion in three-dimensional...

Artwork