Preview: Seung Ae Lee

Marlborough is pleased to present the work of Seung Ae Lee, winner of The Valerie Beston Artists’ Trust Prize 2016.

The Valerie Beston Artists’ Trust was established in 2006 on the death of Valerie Beston, a former director of the gallery, to support artists at the beginning of their careers. The charity collaborates with the Royal College of Art to award an annual prize to a postgraduate student selected from the degree show. This comprises a studio for a year at SPACE, a financial contribution towards materials, tutorial support generously provided by the RCA, and an exhibition at the end of the year. Catherine Lampert and Pilar Ordovas have kindly selected the winner of the prize.

Seung Ae Lee makes meticulous, detailed animations which derive from drawings of everyday objects and the natural world. Thousands of drawings, which are erased in the process, go into each animation of approximately 5-10 minutes projected onto a wall. Seung likes the feeling of drawing with pencil on paper as it feels like a natural extension of herself “and more than any other material, it has allowed me to be absorbed in my work”.

The drawings are generated by forms which may begin with a basic shape such as a circle or an oval. The images then create new ideas that are transformed by her imagination and give the work its meaning. They develop through minute and complex changes to present an autonomous but credible world. This may refer to the interior and exterior of the body, to nature or to memorable items. There is a soundtrack of percussion instruments and sound effects are added to elucidate and complement the visual imagery.

Seung has said of her work “I often refer to the worlds of other species rather than the human one in order to create a world that is persuasive in its own way”. This subject matter includes animals, plants and insects. The works start with the question of how we experience things through our consciousness, which could exist as a constant, uninterrupted stream of images beyond physical space. The animations reference the four elements of earth, water, air and fire.

Time is a key element in making these enthralling and lyrical animations - “It is continually reminding us that the past is always present”.

The exhibition will comprise three animations: A Cabinet 2017 (7 minutes) based on a cabinet of curiosities containing various body parts; Becoming 2017 (10 minutes) inspired by the intense flow of energy through perception, spirituality, birth, growth, death and life and A Lamp 2017 (4 minutes) focused on the sensation between physical space and consciousness. The exhibition will also provide an opportunity to see earlier works such as A Frog 2016 (5 minutes) and A Bird 2016 (7 minutes) with original drawings.

Seung Ae Lee was born in 1979 in Seoul. She graduated from Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, with a BA in Painting and attained an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2016. Seung has had solo exhibitions in Korea, Japan, USA and the UK and has been included in numerous group exhibitions. In 2005 she was represented at Art Basel by Gallery Hyundai. MBC Nationwide TV News, Korea, featured an interview about her exhibition Ultra Skin (25 August 2009) and Google Cultural Institute selected her for the online Google Arts & Culture the same year.
In 2013 she was awarded the Gucci Young Artist Grant, Seoul, Korea.