LEE YunHee

White Nights, White Hands, and White Nightmares
Kho Chung-hwan(art critic)
Baekya means white nights. In general, baekya is a natural phenomenon that the sun does not set for several days or for months in a polar region. If so, what does Baekya mean that Lee Yunhee called her latest work as the same word? Would it mean a night that she stayed up? A night that she cannot sleep even if she wants to sleep? Why can’t she get to sleep? What makes her difficult to fall into sleep? It’s due to desire. Desire makes her difficult to fall into sleep. The desire unrevealed during the day is awaken at night. And the desire wanders about at night like a sleep walker. Unconsciousness opens its eyes. Unconsciousness has a deeper layer than consciousness. Unconsciousness is a storeroom of consciousness(or desire) that what’s suppressed are piled up one by one and also a bed like sleep, or like trance, or like swamp that conceives things filled with pre-consciousness existed before consciousness, indeterminate things, variable things, and performing things. Things blossom above the bed and such blossoming things are different from the nature of the things in reality. This is because desire is suppressed and such a suppression distorts things. This is why it’s different from the reality and the shape of things that were not seen because they were hidden by the reality is revealed. It can be the moment when a thing reveals its true nature wholly.
Artist’s work is different from the reality although it resembles the reality so much. Maybe it seems to open such a reality that can be a true reality itself because it was difficult to be seen, obscured by the sensuous reality or another reality (virtual reality? alternate reality? augmented reality?) in a certain sense. Reality is stratified by multiple layers and one of the stratified layers of reality is revealed. To artist, baekya meant, above all, the surface of white porcelain, meant innocence like bleaching, meant madness making her petrified, meant unconsciousness which is deeper than consciousness, meant night which is clearer than daytime, and meant things flowering at night. Novalis told that the sin committed in the daytime is purified at night. To artist, baekya might be the night that purified such a sin. It may mean the night that washes consciousness with unconsciousness.

LEE YunHee
Born in    1986, Daejeon, Korea

EDUCATION
2012    M.F.A, Ceramics, Hong Ik University, Seoul, Korea
2008    B.F.A, Ceramics.Glass, Hong Ik University, Seoul, Korea

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2013    white night, ClayArch Gimhae Museum, Gimhae, Korea
             singing sanctuary, Gallery ag, Seoul, Korea
    
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2014    ARTisans Louis Vuitton social contribution project, space k, Seoul, Korea
             Young Revolution 2014, ION ART gallery, singapore
2013    Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale 2013, HOT Rookies , Korea
             Black and whight, yido, Seoul, Korea
             not a ceramic, space k, Seoul, Korea
2012    START Craft-K in Seoul, araart, Seoul, Korea
2011    Une Saison en Coree, Collection Gallery, France
2010    Ceramic Art & Technology, AT center, Seoul, Korea
2009    Peep, SongwonArtcenter, Seoul, Korea
2008    Funny funny, Gallery sejul, Seoul, Korea