Yein Lee

Lives and works in Vienna, Austria

Artist statement

My practice begins with a condition of emergence. I approach form and matter not as fixed entities, but as temporary states produced through contact, pressure, fatigue, decay, and transformation. Across sculpture, installation, sound, and performance, I create situations in which materials, bodies, and environments act upon one another. I am interested in the moment when form begins to exceed intention: when something appears or reorganizes through processes that cannot be fully controlled. Rather than treating artworks as stable objects, I understand them as living configurations of relations. Human and nonhuman bodies, industrial materials, organic matter, architecture, sound, moisture, heat, and movement become participants within the work. Each element carries its own tendencies, rhythms, and capacity to affect what surrounds it. My works emerge through accumulation, abrasion, assembly, suspension, and states of imbalance. I often use materials that retain traces of previous use, exposure, or physical strain. Materials are not passive substances to be shaped into predetermined forms. They resist, redirect, contaminate, and transform the process. I construct environments in which form develops through interaction. Linear elements stretch, connect, divide, and suspend, activating the negative space between objects and bodies. Emptiness is not treated as a neutral background, but as a material and spatial force that shapes movement, tension, and perception. A sculpture...

Artwork