The Old Garden – Blue Waiting

A mixed media installation

January 9– January 30, 2021

Artist Hoyoung Lee

Exhibit Opening January 9, 11am – 4pm

*To attend, please RSVP to info@solacontemporary.org*

Zoom Artist Talk: Date to be announced.

This show is on-view alongside group show The Art of Infrastructure. 

In this mixed media installation, South Korean artist Hoyoung Lee asks questions about self, body, and violence through visual expression. Using art as a mirror to reflect the self, Lee begins with the body as the basis for understanding life and the world around us. To look into the self, one must seek a reflection that exists outside of the body, one which contains errors and reversals. The body exists within the world and the world exists before the awareness of the body. Lee’s installation Looking into the world and at other people is the same as looking into oneself, reflected in the world and in other people.

Artist Statement

“The body exists within the world and it lives in the city or in nature. The body superficially meets the scenery of city and of nature that the body can touch. Thus, the body meets on the surface of city and nature. Time can be seen as a surface, where the present has formed above history and below the infinite branches of the future. In the present, life scenes are created by thousands of people, while the shadow of civilization simultaneously disappears from their lives. People continue living by walking on death. The scenery of the city newly blossoms above the death and rust of past civilizations. Different beings now meet each other in the same space and on the surface of time. Thus, an object cannot be examined in one perspective as the object exists through many perspectives in the same moment.

The world where the body exists is the multipolar world, where infinite incidents happen at the same time, and the body is subjected to these incidents. The time keeps flowing and history repeats itself.

The city is a garden created in the crossing of multiple roads. The body of ‘myself’ exists in this jungle-like city. My garden is a part of the city and of the world of the body at the same time. The world and the garden are on the time river of the old garden. Consequently, the beings existing in the present world are also in the old garden.

In the old garden, death and birth happen at the same time, and beings pass away while new beings approach. The blooming flowers in the present is the outcome of enduring the past winter. The death of the present’s falling flowers is a death for the future fruit. In the old garden, the body has dreams and wishes. The body waits, longing for something. The blue waiting is expressed through the present hope and dream. The present hope and dream are expressed on the screen, by holding something that is invisible.”