Gallery d'Arte
Dong Yeoun Lee: Project Room
Gallery d’Arte, NY
2/28 - 3/14, 2017
Dong Yeoun Lee's series of female portraits features standing and sitting young women in traditional Korean dress who display a range of technological devices. Although the scroll paintings elicit a definite Asian sensibility (oriental coloring on oriental paper), they are reminiscent of the art of Thomas Gainsborough who produced sympathetic portraits of female subjects, which penetrated their social "masks" to reveal the truth of their character. Lee’s works are shorn of site-specific ornamentation; they hone the essence of solitary or dual figures situated on empty formats, which accentuate their faces and poses.
The young women exist in isolation within the confines of the vertical design as they quietly assert their presence. The figure in "Clear Girl" displays a contemplative smile, mysterious and inward, not unlike a "Mona Lisa" smile in its enigmatic purity and elusiveness. The girl in "Redefining Contemporary Beauty 5" (2012) dresses traditionally but her preoccupations appear to be thoroughly modern as she listens, presumably, to music with headsets, wears a digital watch and seems to be using a Bluetooth device with her cell phone. Her Hanbok garment signifies the ability to participate in the customs of historical eras as well as present day trends. The girl's modest reserved demeanor might suggest that she is "old-fashioned" apart from her display and use of contemporary devices. The subjects are out to communicate on whatever level they are functioning on at the present moment.
The communication tools infuse a narrative element into several of the works; the females in "Redefining Contemporary Beauty 1," and "Redefining Contemporary Beauty 5" convey the impression that they experience no strife or conflicts, but accept the intersection of past and present, navigating diverse cultural expectations in a hybrid life.
The blank activates the figures, highlighting them in the soft cream-colored format. The pictures are muted and neutral, enabling the viewer to appreciate the delicate smiles and inner energy that brings to life the figures’ facial features and personal feelings. The subjects in "Clear Girl" (2017) and in "Bright Girl, Smiling Girl" (2017) seem secure in a serene world of contemplation, where validation or approval from others is irrelevant. The artist establishes and preserves a mysterious private vision that defies easy labels or generalizations.
In her artist statement, Lee reveals that she is acutely aware of the "other," but in order to create a life that suits her unique personality, she resists social conformity. The natural desire to belong socially is strong. In this series the artist asserts her need to express herself without courting social ostracism, conscious of others’ limits to the acceptance of divergence. Lee searches for her true inner self with the freedom that negates the desire to please or be like her peers. In her philosophical quests she attempts to unearth the nature of existence as it relates to the self and to the being of others. She realizes that to gain a true picture of herself is an impossible goal, as we can never see ourselves as other people see us. Our mirror image is reversed and distorted, so we cannot see ourselves as we truly appear.
Lee views all her art as self-portraits, composites of her essential being with the beings of others. The artist seems to adhere to the Asian precept that in order to discover ones personal discourse, one must investigate the relationship of past to present. In her quest for reality she redefines beauty by adopting customs from past ages into the present as a means to reconcile her "deficiencies." Lee's awareness of her character deficits stirs a sense of loneliness that focuses on longing for her former beauty and youth. Lee regrets the shallow nature of ostensible communication through social media, which she believes accentuates and generates feelings of estrangement. She has created unfathomable images of solitary girls who, despite their use of social media, maintain their separateness while in search of themselves. - Mary Hrbacek
Ms. Hrbacek is an artist who has been writing reviews of NY art exhibitions since 1999; she has covered shows in almost every museum in town.
Transforming Contemporary Beauty
Dong Yeoun Lee at Gallery d’Arte, Chelsea, New York
February 24- March 14, 2016
by Thalia Vrachopoulos
It is fitting that as a Korean woman curator Suechung Koh at Gallery d’Arte in Chelsea chose to exhibit Dong Yeoun Lee’s work for the artist depicts updated versions of the Korean female. Indeed, even today, it is not easy for females in that society to conform to its Confucian tenets that demand compliance to a strict pecking order of power. In fact, through her show Dong Yeoun Lee: Redefining Contemporary Beauty Koh demonstrates her dissidence almost as much as Lee’s images. Lee’s females are riotous in their joy while listening to music or using the telephone and consequently, it is left for us to assume that their mode of behavior is not only acceptable but the norm for today’s Korean females.
At a quick glance, and based upon the scroll formats, brush on silk media and hand ground colors Don-Yeoun Lee’s paintings look traditional. But, at closer inspection details such as earphones, android telephones, virtual reality devices and other contemporary consumer products become evident as accessories worn or held by Lee’s sitters, thus altering the reading of her images.
Lee’s women seem anachronistic because they wear traditional costume until one understands that even today, and although somewhat modernized, in Korea women dress in Hanbok for special occasions like weddings. Historically, a Hanbok’s color and material varied according to class, sex and age and usually the more sumptuous the dress, the higher the class meant to wear it. In the Yi dynasty when Confucianism was at its height, strict emphasis was placed on etiquette and dress codes based on Chinese Ming Dynasty precepts brought to Korea during King Taejong’s reign in 1403. Hanbok consist of a long Chima (skirt), and a short Juhgori (jacket) held closed at the right by ribbons called Goreum. At the turn of the 20th century the Juhgori became so short so as to allow the skirt band to show thus being considered vulgar by the conservative upper classes. Lee’s Hanboks combine such details as very short Juhgori, unacceptable in the past, and brightly colored armpit inserts usually reserved for upper classes. Lee’s Sounds Like Spring is Coming, 2014 (Hand Ground Color on Silk, 23.8x28.6”) is a small painting on silk, whose beautiful sitter wears a green Juhgori with a scarlet Chima that signal her newly wedded state. The blossoming cherry branch stretching from the upper right corner as if to hug the beauty, is painted by the artist from behind the silk in order to afford some depth and to further soften its powdery hand ground color.
Gisaeng or professional entertainer genre painting by Yangban class literati proliferated in the Joseon dynasty period. Painters like Shi San or Hye-won depicted the great beauties of Korea as did Sin Yun-bok in The Beauty, or Kim Duk-sin’s Women out Walking. But while these masters were using the notion of portraiture to demonstrate their skill or to depict the beauty of Korean women, Lee uses the format to examine the notion of female as metaphor for the ‘other.’
While seemingly free and updated, Lee’s beautiful women are dressed in traditional costumes and consequently are still somewhat bound to their Confucian past. It is in the last scroll that we see the contemporary icon who differs from her sisters coloristically but also in pose, for she is moving. She does not sit or stand passively, and her Hanbok lacks any color, thus her class is not predetermined by sumptuary laws. Her round face is made up, and her hair is clipped short while she gesticulates to the music coming from her cell phone to her earphones. Apropos of the modern female, the painting is entitled Redefining Contemporary Beauty, 2014 (Hand Ground Color on Korean Paper, 63.7”x25.6”.)
Lee’s beauties are self-portraits that examine the reflection of the artist’s inner being and feelings of a Kierkegaard-ian existential incompleteness. So in this sense Lee goes back to her history to bring it up to date by focusing on the individual’s experience. She acknowledges the uneasy partnership between mind and body while focusing on sensory perception in order to negotiate the existential divide. Her creative instinct is an act of self-assertion as much as it is an act of defiance and freedom.
By: Thalia Vrachopoulos
Review of Exhibition:
Dong Yeoun Lee: Redefining Contemporary Beauty
Gallery d’Arte, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 518 New York City, NY 10011