Being or Not Being

Simulacrum is real when truth seems false. Nil is being when existence seems intangible.

Lee Lee-Nam’s post-modern video artwork, fictitious like dreams which overlap reality and illusion, is the shift of space-time, and more over the fantastic world in which the artist subverts the past and the future, West and East. Just like the moon of present ever shone our forefathers, the modern elements glitter in the ancient landscape; a twinkle lasts for thousands years.

The oldest always present the latest modern. Lee Lee-Nam is skilled in combining masterpieces and making recreations by technology to exceed the current vision and era. Lee Lee-Nam believes that video art could express imaginations more thoroughly, and passes on more atmosphere and surprises by acting variations. He uses Zheng Ban-Chao’s Chinese traditional painting to portray the natural changes of spring, summer, autumn and winder. You will see the sparse bamboo shadow shakes lightly in the breeze, then snowflakes fall and cover the leafs, even come out from the words of the poem.  Classic ink bamboos are given a vivid and graceful new life. On the beautiful tableau of “Mona Lisa”, Lee Lee-Nam adds the background of war, parachutes, combat plane and bombs. Within the destroyed and smoky battlefield, Mona Lisa can only turn her astonished eyes following the airplane; behind the mysterious smile there hides her puzzle and worry to the future world of fifty years later.
 
The artist re-depicts and represents irrelevant but familiar pictures, and let the subjects in each scenery shift and crossover in between. The steamship and lonely rowboat accompanied by the sun and moon rising and falling, sail to places far away home. The interlacing of time and space present an alternative aroma of “being in the mountain where the surrounding puzzled by deep clouds”. The aesthetics of contradictions immediately take off the heavy history of masterpieces and create a brand-new story. No need to describe with words; by the elegant flying butterflies on the painting of flowers and birds, and the oriole jumping between flower shrubs after rain, we could hear the new world symphony that the artist is looking for.

Besides ancient paintings and masterpieces, the current sceneries, living objects, as well as daydreams are elaborately omnipresent in Lee Lee-Nam’s video universe, just like a “new washing machine” in which all the elements are rolling and blended together. From vague to clear, from myths to the future, by video technology which melds 3 dimensions, Lee Lee-Nam builds a simulant virtual world which swings between the reality and mirage.
 
One monitor, two monitors, eight monitors… Monitors have become talking and acting artworks. Stories passing through time and space are represented between delicate changes. By videos Lee Lee-Nam is narrating a seeming distant but acquainted, fantastic but logical modern legend. Infinite imaginations and possibilities extend beyond the monitors without end…

Celia Huang
Translated by Ko-Nung Huang