Storyteller’s silence or beauty of blank
Lee Sanghyun’s work is replete with stories. The mixture of an imagined story and a quoted story creates a surplus of stories. An imagined story becomes a starting point of work and a quoted is imported for effects. Quoted stories are completed ones but imagined are to be completed. A quoted story is composed of sentences but an imagined is composed of words. Possibilities of combining words are unlimited. There is no any realized or determined code for combining words. In time the completion of a quoted story is deconstructed into words by an imagined. Different modes of stories are to get to have the same structure and to get mixed up into one. In a world of words, events, and images, anything is possible. It is a world of chaos where any code can be realized. It is a world where any order is possible. It is a world with all the possible orders pleated, not a single one having not yet been realized. But, paradoxically, it is also a world of silence. It is full of others’ voices but “my” voice.

Encounter
An event encounters a mind. The event moves the mind and a story is generated. With the story meeting another story, a symphony of endless stories is created. The news that New York Philharmonic performed in PyongYang attracted the storyteller’s mind. It moved him and a story was generated. With the story meeting another story of dream by a member of royalty named Anpyeongdaegun from the 16th century of Joseon Dynasty, <Symphony No. 9 Mongyudowondo>, a symphony full of endless stories, was created.

“<Symphony No. 9 Mongyudowondo> is to celebrate the performance that New York Philharmonic played Symphony No. 9 by Antonin Dvorak at Dong PyongYang Theater in February 2008 under the baton of Lorin Maazel. On that day all the audiences gave a standing ovation after the performance was over. North Korea and America has been hostile to each other with growing tension caused by the North’s missile and nuclear development. They are real new worlds to each other. Looking at the Statue of Liberty in the late 19th century, as Dvorak saw America a new world, North Korea is also a new world in its way. My <Symphony No. 9 Mongyudowondo> is a paradise where all human beings live together without conflicts between ideologies, races, and cultures.”
(Note of artist 2009)

Parting or blank
The encounter is of two layers. It is a relation of putting a layer on another. It is a situation in which they can be put apart as much as they can be overlapped. It is the ontological situation in which his work is placed. Now we can see his work as two layers of a layer on another. When we do that we find out a blank on the upper layer. It is for the densely packed space with the lower layer to emerge as a blank. It is the space in which “my” voice is silent but which is full of others’ voices when it is overlapped with quoted worlds. His work is like him as he attracts people with various stories for hours. The circumlocutory way he tells his story through others’ stories.