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Fragmented Life, the
Twofold Gaze at the Self
written by
Kim, Ok-real (Curator of Post Gallery)
The works of Lee Seel-ku
realize the reality of life through disorganization of trees or plants, parts of
nature. His pictures suggest the significance of life by means of the metaphor
of fragmentation and disorganization. At the first sight, the plastic qualities
of his works seems to be commonplace symbolic signs, attained by disorganizing
common images and escaping from self. However, it is noteworthy that the
fragments of plants, represented in abstract image, suggest the way of gaze at
twofold self.
<Untitled-1>and <Untitled-2> using the image of a pond or a
swampy land, grasp the dual significance of the self: the one, the 'intrinsic
power' of self, the recognition of the self as the subject of life, the other,
the 'insecurity of living being', the recognition of undifferentiated space.
<Untitled-3> makes the constant repetition of
life and death into fragments of nature, a fossils. It is paradox that through
this fossilization, our limited life on earth secures the eternity.
<Untitled-4> embodies the efforts to seize the
reality of life in the languages of gesture. The artist attempts to seize the
life in the embodiment of traces and actions. As a part of this attempt, in
<Untitled-5> and <Untitled-6> the variant images of
plants are floating in the air up and down . By conquering the limitation of
space, the life in the water and the life in the air become one, realize the
unity of life.
In <Untitled-7>, the artist raises the
gaze at the life to the selfless consciousness of life. The space of coexistence
becomes the selfless and objectless space when the gaze at the self becomes one
with the inner voice. In <Untitled-8> and <Untitled-9>, through the realization of inner
unity, the space of harmony and formation suggests the possibility to find a new
meaning of reality and existence.
The works of Lee Seel-gu intend to
seize the duality of life through the disorganization of shapes. At the same
time, his plastic languages, the disorganization of plant shapes symbolized in
abstract form, inner expression of the space composition act as the metaphor of
disorganization in order to illuminate the problem of life.
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