Monthly Art (October Issue, 2020)
Jihyeon Lee Orion
2020.9.4 – 9.29 / All Time Space
Hyunah Jo
Numerous images born and bred by the Internet are constantly with us, floating online. As natural as how we are used to looking at flat screens and touch their surface, these images from the web are deeply engraved in our perceptions, burning bright as an inextinguishable star far away amid our memories. The majority of these are, of course, ‘Jjal(짤).’ The term itself stands for every image online: merged and reiterated out of context images as well as captured or partial shots from diverse sources of media (terrestrial broadcasting, program providers, YouTube, films, etc.) in file extensions such as JPG, PNG, and GIF. In the cycle between prevalence and deterioration, they subsist anywhere - both online and in reality, becoming the environment and the trigger of visual arts today.
Painting is no longer the mimesis of nature but of the Internet and the images occupying it. It may seem so obvious - almost banal, that when an artist selects an image online and moves it onto a canvas, it is an act of observing the world one belongs in and transferring it to another flat surface. Such may seem like an act of replicating results of endless mimicry onto canvases. However, it is more like a translation to images with property from observing the world where the artist belongs partially or more. In other words, if paintings of the past motivate production by imitating nature, the paintings of the Post-Internet era perceive the Internet and online images as an environment, mimicking as well as reproducing its characteristic. Likewise, Jihyeon Lee’s works display the form of Jjal, overlays of images resembling pop-up screens, how jjals become popular and losing resolution due to constant alterations into paintings and collages of colored pencils drawings. Saying without the Internet, she could not have started these works, Jihyeon Lee chose smartphones, photoshop, and online space as the surroundings to produce her paintings. Her works are indeed images that only someone with a shrewd eye and has stayed long enough in this environment can portray.
Even if tangible materials, oil paint especially, fill the canvas, the characteristics of the mimicked are indelible. The elements of online images: rectangular, planar, color scheme, the grids indicating transparency, and so on are fully visible on the flat surface of twenty-eight artworks. The lengths and heights of the oil paintings are either 60.5x72.5cm or vice versa, resembling a computer monitor. The paper drawings are also in a single size of 21x28.7cm.
Not only the specifications but also the figures within the screen reveal the properties of the digital environment. Though parts of images from Cinderella and Sailor Moon might suggest Picasso’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1912), it does not transfer human motion to the plane. Rather, it is like glitches or short movements in GIF images. The face of Son Goku and Dexter in stacked rectangular image layers are also examples of transitioning videos on play to the two-dimensional screen. While the existence of three dimensions still has an impact on the Internet, online images operate differently. The same applies to the paper collages. Many of the colored pencil drawing series have their fronts cut off or penetrated, with another paper adhered as if it is the background. Layer upon a layer, a different square plane on top of the other resembles photoshopped digital images – cropped and synthesized. Jihyeon Lee’s artworks immediately recall the formation of online images and make us aware of how the compositions of paintings are starting to resemble those of images online.
The titles come from two-dimensional environments. Including a video work, the exhibition consists of artworks with names of food (Pizza, Candy), daily activities (Hear, Walk), objects (Teddy bear, Mirror ball), and words that are likely to be in fantasy animations (Transformation, Soft tree). Of course, such categorization is not absolute since we use these everyday vocabularies in various contexts in both fictional and real life. Likewise, a word or an image in real life and online can have the same and different meanings.
Under the condition of being flat, Jihyeon Lee’s paintings and the environment of online images are compatible, consisted almost identically of overlapping and repetitive layers transitioning their meanings into jargons used on/offline. In current terms of connecting digital images and visual arts, the conversation of how the artist and viewers aware images and the environment in which it is born has been done in various ways and continues to do so. However, we should take a closer look at Jihyeon Lee’s works, which naturally perceive both three-dimensional properties and the environment within the monitor. Her paintings are no longer founded on online images but are the derivatives from the Internet.
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Hyunah Jo, Jihyeon Lee Solo Exhibition Orion Critique, Monthly Art, (October, 2020), p. 144.