We are pleased to introduce Lee Wan’s solo exhibition, How to become us as pool’s third production program in 2011. In his new series, on the other side of its sculptural experiment, Lee has deployed a conceptual work of sneering at the system which governs our way of thinking and the value criterion(known as a ‘standard’).
Collected everyday objects including water bottle, refrigerator, utility pole, mannequin and hammer, the artist added weights of each object, divided the sum by the number of items(60) and got 5.06kg as an average. While using the measurement as an absolute value, he cut and pasted every 60 objects to stay at 5.06kg. In the exhibition, the objects of varied forms and functions are ‘processed’ by applying the standard of ‘weight’. Recalling a sales stand, these objects are displayed in lines and heaps.
In his previous work, Lee had experimented models which had gone through the process of excluding their original functions while forms were remained, or the process of transposing their functions into another one. For example, there were a baseball made of grinded chicken, a melting skull made of margarine, life goods, a wooden stick and a cross statue which were made of grinded meat. His exploration into the useless broomstick made of meat or the inedible meat after certain process, must be a kind of hybridization of mutations. Neither broomstick nor meat satisfied the functional role as proper products. This inconvenient cohabitation of broomstick and meat within an object becomes a symbol of violence in the industrial society where consumes, regulates, categorizes and defines objects for their ‘uses’ only. Lee intends his hybrid objects to be disqualified within the consuming based production system, designs to lose their identity, therefore reveals a blind side of our system, just like a symptom. His most recent work, Evidence of Irreversible Standards on Them(2009) experimented an extreme aspect by grinding and polishing hammer, shoes brush and balance weight until they become mirrors. Against the ‘irreversible’ function and role, this experiment emphasized on disturbing existing system while objects accommodating or borrowing a new function.
His new work in comparison with former ones that sounded the possibility for subtle transposition and disturbance of our system, has strenghthened the sensory violence. The artist purposely maximized the process of physical transformation of objects by applying an absurd standard, ‘weight’. ‘Function’, as a standard, has its own logical layout and order. ‘Weight’, not in the immaterial level for measuring the sense of presence or density, but in the physical level, is an appraisal standard based on ‘heavy industrial mind’ and ‘maximalism idea’. When this decides our society as a sole standard, the violence of egalitarianism would be ruthless all over the surface. There’s no doubt that our way of thinking would be realigned to fit into something spectacle and monumental only.
These sculptures by Lee Wan expose the aspect of realignment after cut and paste. Ironically and interestingly, each fragments within the realigned and collective objects brings the excluded implications back and manifests itself more vividly. Standing individual elements out of the extreme egalitarianism with an illogical standard, Lee, over the extreme paradox and contradiction, here may suggests “how to become us.”
Heejin Kim(director, art space, pool)
