Leenam Lees work(영어)_Ok-real Kim
관련링크
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Lee-nam Lee’s work
Rebirth of light, ‘a baptized TV set’
Ok-real Kim, Art Director of Contemporary Art Institute of Korea
The theme of Lee-nam Lee’s exhibition, ‘Becomes light’ is about rebirth of light (Reborn light). What is the meaning of light that an artist, Lee-nam Lee pursues through his work of art? According to him, our contemporaries’ fearin modern society is like a locomotive that is out of order.He asks himself what is needed for our contemporaries to relieve fear and not wander through shadows.
Lee-nam Lee’s thought process to find out the meaning of life is expressed metaphorically in one of his works, ‘a baptized TV set’.He symbolizes death by submerging a TV set in water, which is reborn whenit rises out of water. He presupposes that a human being made up of a body and soul is similar to a TV set that has a frame and contents. He has been experimenting with lots of thematic matters including ‘tradition and modernity’, ‘the Orient and the Occident’, ‘nature and civilization’, and ‘originality and duplication’, trying to go beyond the boundaries of time and space with the aid of advanced multimedia. For this exhibition, he has created an interesting installation piece called ‘a baptized TV set’, in which he submerges a TV monitor screening doves in water and then gets it out of water.
If we suppose that a TV set gets baptized, what could be the differences between a TV set before baptism and that after baptism? There could be lots ofviewpoints arisen from the process of discoursesregardless of what his intention of the work really was in the first place. For him, the metaphor of a TV set that becomes light beyond death symbolizes our fragile contemporaries facing fear of modern society. It refers to as one’s subconscious desires that satisfy the true goal of enjoyment, ceaselessly challenging society, a solid system that is full of factors of inhibitation. As a French philosopher, Jacques Lacanpoints out, the pursuit of real enjoyment, jouissance, is related to the Real that is beyond our reality like excessive desires can be described as desires toward death.
By showing us his work of art, ‘a baptized TV set’ drowned in water that meets its death to be reborn, Lee-nam Lee alludes to a fake sublimation that makes a person be in a state of being alive and dead at the same time, through which the true goal of his or her suppressed desires is achieved. He expresses death by submerging a TV set in waterbecause death is a precondition to being reborn, saying that his TV set, an electrical device doomed in water, symbolizes a person’s courage to overcome his or her trauma. In that sense, ironically, the moment of death symbolizes the time when that person overcomes his or her pain by facing the pain.
Jouissance, a theory of Lacan,connotes excessive desires for resistance and subversion as a means to secure satisfaction. Excessive desires accompanying pain rather than pleasure lead a person to the shadow of death, making that person face factors of inhibition. Therefore, to avoid the encounter of death, that person reflects his or her imaginary state in a substitute that can be a shelter from death.
A TV set, in which human beings are reflected, is perhaps something that symbolizes human beings themselves, conveying splendid light that expresses the sense of loss and isolation that we experience while living in society, which forces us to obey rules and give up on liberation. No matter what we choose to do, our subconscious desires are not free from being controlled by consciousness in the world that is full of illusions.
When seen from the aspect of socialization process of a human being, the meaning of light that Lee-nam Lee perceives is similar to the fact that a person cannot recognize himself or herself without the Other like it is impossible for a person to see himself or herself without a mirror. The meaning of light in his work, ‘a baptized TV set’ is about light of life because only light is able to be reborn after its death.
