Sang Hyun Lee, The Museum of Photography, Seoul
Birth
1954, Seoul
Genre
Installation, Photography, Media
Homepage
Photographic KoreaⅢ: Sang Hyun LEE_curated by Sun Young KIM
In Lee Sanghyun’s photographs and video works, it contains retrospective point of view about Korean history, which faded away and contemporary interpretation with strong consciousness of period. At the same time, it also contains imaginative point of view about the next generation complexly. The artist turns the time back to 100 years ago and restores the images of Chosun, the previous name of Korea from 14th Century to the early 20th Century. Through these restored photographic images and video works, Lee restores the forgotten history, flavor and nostalgia in our memory and proposes a way for us to encounter history at the current period. And also, his works bring effectiveness of fantasy that crosses time, while overturning the finality of documentary photography, and suggests a new possibility of photography. Starting with publication of Hahoehaeng, based on horses in Hahoe village, Andong, when he was majoring in photography at university, the artist has been working with photography for over 30 years. Lee is also known as installation and performance artist. Planning a grand project about a moon to launch up in the sky at the end of the world, making maps and robots and narratives with his unlimited imagination about humans and the space, his work climbs over the frame of photographic media and presents his general interests in visual arts.
In the participating works of Lee for this exhibition such as 3000 Court Ladies, One Day of History, Memory of Old Fortress, The Self Meditated Portrait of Korean Historical Epic, and The 1st National Treasure of Joseon, Lee suggests witty combinations of realism of the authenticity of photography in historical documentary photography and processed images based on digital technology of our time. Through the combination of the analogue photography in the past and the digitalized images made by his own imagination, he reads carefully about the paradoxical phases of today’s photography. Not everything recorded with photographs is always true, despite the fact that photograph records a fact. And these photographs that speak about such paradox of the photographic medium present the images of our next generation a step ahead by the combination of photographic medium and digital technology.
We are currently working on this page. Please check back soon.