Hyun Joung Lee (South Korea)
Bleu Path
Path
Imaginary voyages between the heavens and the earth, clouds and valleys: I create starry paths for the eyes. My universe is poetic. Like an inner journey, I invite the viewer on a walk, to follow me through these ethereal sights. They come from my childhood in Korea, my endless love of painting, and my metalworking. It is from these three aspects that I have constructed my universe. From my past in Korea I keep the memory of materials and the beliefs of my ancestors: Rice paper is the outer layer of these memories, enamel bowls their secret symbols. As a child I already imagined paintings upon this paper, landscapes. In France I reappropriated this raw material, dissolving it in water and remodelling it to create an irregular, living texture so that the paper leaves behind its colourless silence and manifests these tinted worlds that inhabit me. I paint, I underline with India ink, I sprinkle with Korean pigments. As is the case with others, the paper takes me in strange directions and I allow myself to be led. Occasionally, a forest dominates, almost heavenly, and sometimes the blue lines become more mysterious, almost troubling. As for the bowls, one is metaphysically given to each of us at birth. As different their sizes may be, we all use them. My little bowls are these lives, their varied materials reflecting this individuality. In my landscapes they are more than a simple decoration, they are presences and, for me, sometimes an entire people. From my past they create life paths. I have fed my work from the roots of my childhood to my studies at Sejong in Seoul and my smith training. All of these periods of my life have contributed to my craft. My knowledge is the sum of these experiences. However, it is not this that one should take away from my work; I prefer that it be a way of elevating oneself.
Lee Hyun Joung
