LEE SeaHyun

When I was serving my mandatory military service, I would be in a tactical area at night, close to the border. I would wear night vision goggles, which coated everything in red. The forests and trees felt so fantastic and beautiful. It was unrealistic scenery filled with horror and fear, and with no possibility of entering.  
What Lee describes is an effect that is recreated in his paintings. The night vision goggles alter the whole of the vision, creating a hypertrophied, denaturalized effect. The effect is one of beauty and alienation, and uncanny temporal displacement ? a sense of stepping into a different temporal continuum that is apart from history or the present. That complex nexus of sensations and ideas is almost effortlessly carried in each of these paintings, and is communicated in a visceral and immediate manner.
But beyond that immediate ? indeed, almost physical ? effect, Lee’s reuse of the visual effect of military night vision goggles indicates the way in which he integrates the political into the aesthetic, a key theme given the subject and manner of his work. In Lee’s paintings, the political is so seamlessly embedded into the aesthetic that it is difficult to perceive; the referenced ideologies are everywhere and nowhere at once.
This, of course, is the larger message of these paintings. The wash of military red illustrates the manner in which political ideology functions, not simply within the logic of Lee’s paintings, but also in the world beyond it: as a subtle but pervasive wash of color, one that exists neither outside nor inside the concrete elements of each image, but as a literal filter across it.
Ideology is visible not in the specifics of the landscape and what happens in it ? that landscape is, Lee suggests, so many shuffled fragments ? but rather is located in the vision of those who find themselves inhabiting it. It is so difficult to shake off precisely because it is already lodged in our very vision, like a screen through which we perceive the world.
Political ideology is not necessarily located in a concrete message; instead, it can be characterized as a way of seeing. Lee’s paintings illustrate the reasons why painting ? and art more universally speaking ? is perfectly poised to deliver a political message, pr at least an insight into the manner in which the political functions. Lee makes no separation between politics and aesthetics, and understands that if aesthetics are about constructing a way of looking, then so too is politics.
In this sense, many key elements in Lee’s paintings function both on a political and an aesthetic level. The symbols employed in his work, whether it is the wash of red or the way his imagined landscapes combine elements of both the North and South Korean mountain ranges, set the visual terms of his paintings, while also delivering a concise political message. It is a kind of sparse utility, and a virtuoso efficiency, that is at work here.
Extracted from ‘BETWEEN RED’ foreword – Katie Kitamura (Curator)

LEE SeaHyun
Born in 1967, Geoje, Korea

EDUCATION
1989    BFA Department of Western Painting, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
2001    MFA Department of Painting, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
2006    MFA Department of Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2014    Between Red, VOUS ETES ICI Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2012    Plastic Garden, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2011    Between Red, Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York, USA
2009    Between Red, Zonca & Zonca Gallery, Milan, Italy
              Between Red, Harewood House, Leeds, UK
              Between Red, ASPEX Contemporary Art Gallery, Portsmouth, UK
2008    Between Red, Union Gallery, London, UK
              Between Red, One and J Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2007    Between Red, MIKI WICK KIM Contemporary Art, Zurich, Switzerland
2001    Daily, Contemporary Museum of Hongik University, Seoul, Korea

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2013    Pulse of Sight, Hakgojae Shanghai, Shanghai, China
              Real Landscape of the day, Gyeomjae Jeongseon Memorial Museum,
              Seoul, Korea
              The Moment, We Awe, HOW Art Museum, Wenzhou, China
2012    (Im)Possible Landscape, PLATEAU, Seoul, Korea
              Cynical Resistance, Canvas International Art, Amsterdam, Netherlands
              One must imagine Sisyphus happy, House of the Nobleman, London, UK
              Prelude, Space Cottonseed, Singapore
2011    彼我同一: We are who you are, Gallery Jijihyang, GyeongGi, Korea
              Sea of Peace, Incheon Art Platform, GyeongGi, Korea
              The Future Pass, International Art Exhibition
              “ILLUMInations Biennale Venezia”, Venice, Italy