Installation view of 《What Words Leave》 © Vohm Gallery
Vohm Gallery presents a solo exhibition 《What Words
Leave》 by artist Jinhyung LEE, on view through November
14.
Having developed a practice that obscures the referential
function of images, moving beyond the process through which they are read
according to their original meanings to reveal the forms and sensations that
remain, LEE turns his attention in 《What Words
Leave》 to the referential
function of language.
Taking familiar words such as LoVe, LifE and TiME, he extracts
and combines only the spaces occupied and left behind by their letters,
reconfiguring them into new forms. The strokes of letters and the spaces
between them give shape to one another, yet we tend to focus on reading the
words, leaving these spaces in the background.
LEE isolates these spaces and places them at the centre of the
canvas. No longer empty spaces that serve to convey meaning, they emerge as
visual subjects in their own right, each with a distinct contour.
Installation view of 《What Words Leave》 © Vohm Gallery
The title 《What Words Leave》 refers not only to the
traces left behind after something has disappeared. It points, rather, to what
was there all along but went unnoticed as we attended to something else.
Understanding what something means is not necessarily the same as seeing it in
its entirety.
Through the forms that remain within images and letters, LEE
shifts our gaze towards what lies beyond what we believe we already know.
