Yonghyeon Lee

Contact + -

Instagram

I shape the vagueness inside the human body that cannot be seen and expressed in words. The forms that reveal the images floating in my head intuitively are the results of my actions and the images I perceive of the world. We live our lives facing many people, looking at each other’s faces, but when the subject disappears in front of us, their image becomes blurry in our memory. The vague memories we search for are distorted and changed according to our current emotions and environment. In my solo exhibition “Forms of Traces” last winter, 2022, I presented the work “Traces of Sensation,” which shapes the faces of others that we perceive through our subjective emotions using only the sense of touch to shape the head, excluding sight. At that time, the process of remembering and recalling someone seemed similar to molding a faint image in memory as if closing one’s eyes and molding clay. The figures shaped by touch alone appeared as irrational forms, similar to the illusions inside the skin of the actual object. The vagueness inside the human body that not only reproduces but even blurs what we see was transferred to the vague form of the sculpture. In my solo exhibition “Dancing People” held this year, 2023, I began to express the entire shape of the human body, not just the head. Unlike the previous work, which focused on touch, I used the coiling technique, piling up clay from the bottom, and intuitively shaping the form without planning.

I make one leg using clay and then make another leg that goes down to a certain extent. The body is divided into two, and a hole appears in the stomach. As I shaped them with my hands, the form became like a wave, as if it were undulating. When I made several people and put them in one place, they looked like they were dancing. They were all dancing in different ways.

– Artist’s note from “Dancing People”

The ambiguous colors of ceramics that cannot be defined by a single color, along with the irregular shapes of elusive curves, were connected to large resin sculpture paintings. Using primary paints, I created dozens of colors and applied them to the object in hazy shades that could reveal the emotions that I had at the time of the work. The work, which emits a mysterious light like ceramics, blurs the boundary between intention and unintentional. Perhaps, I am constantly searching for unseen shapes through coincidence and intuition to express something that exists but does not disappear.

– Artist’s note from “Dancing People”

As someone stares intently into another’s eyes, I felt an emotion of longing for something that cannot be seen, even though I was looking at an object. To give shape to this emotion that cannot be conveyed through the word “vague,” I reveal the object through coincidental and intuitive acts. The work appears in mixed colors after being formed without defining a specific shape. The colors that are accidentally discovered in the kiln gave me new inspiration. When two glazes overlap and are painted, unlike with watercolors, a new pattern of colors appears through chemical reactions in the high-temperature kiln. The stimulation of the senses that suddenly appeared as unexpected colors, which could not be intended or planned, felt like encountering a familiar yet unfamiliar person by chance. My work naturally led to an interest in colors. The ambiguous colors of ceramics that cannot be defined by a single color, along with the irregular shapes of elusive curves, were connected to large resin sculpture paintings. Using primary paints, I created dozens of colors and applied them to the object in hazy shades that could reveal the emotions that I had at the time of the work. The work, which emits a mysterious light like ceramics, blurs the boundary between intention and unintentional. Perhaps, I am constantly searching for unseen shapes through coincidence and intuition to express something that exists but does not disappear.