Yona LEE

My previous bodies of work addresses contemporary spaces, such as convenience stores and showrooms, and examines the ideas around our desire in commodity culture and the strategy utilized in displaying products. The language of commercial display is deployed, such as glinting, chrome, hooks and slat walls and worked into a dance of lines, weights and balances where objects are lifted to attention through specifically tailored angles and simple gestures.

The context and the physicality of the exhibition space have always played an important role in my work. Just like the way a classical instrumentalist would approach a master piece- their faithfulness in interpreting the context of the time and place its been written, and at the same time trying to convey their own feeling – projects are developed to speculate and respond to particular features of the given space, allowing the space to receive the same amount of focus as the work itself.

Previously trained as a cellist, my reference to music is further exemplified through enquiring line as a visual element. Steel rods- the same material of that spike at the bottom of a cello adjusted to the heights of performer- are utilized and its materiality is questioned by substituting contradicting behaviors such as looseness of strings and the tension of pulled rubber bands.

My most recent project looks at abstracted spaces of subway stations and the virtual space of Internet. Spending much of my time on the streets, especially in an unknown city– walking, busing and metroing – inspired an idea of ‘transition’, whether it is physical, mental or spiritual. I’m interested in collaging different time and spaces into a new space/ time synthesis-blurring the limits of the private and the public, addressing the boundaries of time and space, and celebrating the modernization of transport.

Examining ideas around improvisation, temporality, transition, action and movement, the work draws on the legacies of Constructivism and Minimalism, however my reference to classical music derails this association to problematically introduce sentiment within the piety of formalism.

Yona LEE
Born in 1986, Busan, Korea

EDUCATION
2010 M.F.A., Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
2009 B.F.A. (Honors), Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2016 In Transit, Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul, Korea
2016 Line on Display, West Space, Melbourne, Australia
2015 Triptych, Rear Window, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand
2014 Specific Objects, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, New Zealand
2013 Tangential Structures, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2012 Line Works, Mezzanine, Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand
2012 Composition, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland, New Zealand
2011 Constrained Organism, Open Window, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2016 Meeting in Two Cities, SeMA Nanji Hall, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2014 From the Land of Morning Calm to the Land of the Long White Cloud: Korean Artists in Aotearoa, Whangarei Art Museum, Whangarei, New Zealand
2013 Young and Gifted, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, New Zealand
2010 Untitled, NZ Sculpture OnShore, Auckland, New Zealand
2010 Spring Trellis, Window, Auckland, New Zealand
2010 And and and, George Fraser Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand