Exhibition
 
2022
Tea Time & Coffee Break
Culturetank T5, Seoul, KR
 
2021
Parallel Worlds
Seongkok Art Museum, Seoul, KR
 
2019
Road Show:2019 from Shanghai to Chongqing
Korean Cultural Center Shanghai, CN
 
Tracing Times
Gallery Simon, Seoul, KR
 
2017
Missing
Seongnam Art Center Cube Art Museum, KR
 
Ghost
Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, KR
 
Your Hand, My Heart
Gallery Simon, Seoul, KR
 
2016
Vapours Like Fire Light
Gallery Purple Studio, Namyangju si, KR
 
OLD & NEW
Kansong Art Museum, DDP, Seoul, KR
 
The Illusion of Time
Ilwoo Space, Seoul, KR
 
2015
31 Experiments on Light: Intimate Rapture
Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul, KR
 
International Contemporary Art Project Ulsan 2015
Culture Street, Ulsan, KR
 
2014
Shadow Casters
Gallery Simon, Seoul, KR
 
Liquid Times
Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, KR
 
2013
The Roads of Forking Paths
SeMA Nanji Exhibiiton hall, Seoul, KR
 
Arrival
Gallery Simon, Seoul, KR
 
2012
MAM Project 017: Lee Changwon
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, JP
 
Festival O! Gwangju Media Art 2012
5.18 Democracy Square, Gwangju, KR
 
Other Selves
Alternative Space Loop, Seoul, KR
 
Your Invisible Shadow
Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, KR
 
2011
Bad Romanticism
Arko Art Center, Seoul, KR
 
Parallel World
Kim Chong Yung Museum, Seoul, KR
 
2010
Pleasure Ground
Lokaal 01, Breda, NL
 
2009
Shared. Divided. United.
NGBK, Berlin, Germany
 
Emerging Korean Artists in the World 2009
Hangarm Art Museum, Seoul, Korea
 
City Net_Asia 2009
Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
 
Disappear
AANDO Fine Art, Berlin, Germany
 
2008
Art Through Nature
Space*C Coreana Museum, Seoul, Korea
 
Your Mind's Eye-Digital Spectrum
Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
 
Shadow of Heroes
Gallery Fiebach & Minninger, Cologne, Germany
 

2007

Soft Power: Asian Attitude
Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art
 
ASIA-EUROPE mediations 'Asian attitude' 2007
Muzeum Narodowe, Poznan, Poland
 
'Passersby' Window Gallery, Seoul, Korea
 
'Reflection' doART Gallery, Seoul, Korea
 
'Reflexion' Gallery Januar, Bochum, Germany
/ March 02 - April 5, 2007
 
'New Talents', Art Cologne 2007
 

2003

Changwon Lee recent works Gallery Kusseneers, Antwerp, Belgium
 
shadow casters

Exhibition View: Shadow Casters, 2014, Gallery Simon, Seoul, Korea
from left to right: Holy Light 2005(renewed), 227x221x50cm / up: Sign of Promise, 2014, 65x100x35cm / down: Untitled, 2014, 117x180x45cm, Holy Light, 2014, 276x140x50cm / Supernova, 2014, 65x65x37cm

holy light

Exhibition View: Shadow Casters, 2014
Gallery Simon, Seoul, Korea

holy light

Exhibition View: Shadow Casters, 2014
Gallery Simon, Seoul, Korea

holy light

up: Sign of Promise, down: Untitled, 2014
plastic objects, MDF, LED lighting, frosted glass, 65x100x35cm, 117x180x45cm

supernova

Supernova, 2014
plastic objects, MDF, LED lighting, frosted glass, 65x65x37cm

LUX FLEX enclosure

LUX-FLEX Enclosure, 2014
plastic objects, MDF, LED lighting, Veneer 126.5x42x40cm

LUX-FLEX Enclosure, 2014
plastic objects, MDF, LED lighting, Veneer 126.5x42x40cm

4 cities

left: Angel of the Mirror, right: 4 Cities, 2014
Exhibition View

4 Cities

4 Cities: Baghdad, Pyongyang, Seoul, Fukushima, 2014
show cases, pedestals, LED Lighting, silk screen image 113x45x45cm each

4 Cities

4 Cities: Baghdad, Pyongyang, Seoul, Fukushima, 2014
detail

angel of the mirror

Angel of the Mirror, 2014
Wooden panel, silk screen image on mirror with golden frame, LED lighting, metal frame, 75x122x117cm

the plastic ocean

The Plastic Ocean, 2014
LED panel, back lit/pigment print, metal frame, 44x64x8cm each

the plastic ocean

The Plastic Ocean, 2014
LED panel, back lit/pigment print, metal frame, 44x64x8cm each

 
Shadow Casters

All light has its source and all shadows follow their casters. Ever since the appearance of the first life on earth, all evolving living things may have lived in response to light and shadows for the purpose of survival. And perhaps because these very experiences have been accumulated in human cells or genes, whoever sees light can guess the source and instinctively knows what the caster is.

I read Plato’s parable of the cave in a criticism about my installation work titled Parallel World. And the result of google image searching shows an interesting illustration for the parable. There are prisoners who are chained in the cave and restricted to only be able to look ahead. Behind them a fire is blazing at a distance and between the fire and the prisoners there are ‘shadow casters’ that throw shadows before the prisoners using various objects. Since the prisoners live all their lives seeing only shadows of reality, they cannot find or understand the origin of the phenomenon of the shadows and take the illusion as reality. This allegory made me think that to prohibit people from seeing the truth is closely related to making them unable to see the source of the phenomenon. Although an idea of a philosopher of long ago, it seems to me an image of the world (Weltbild) that still holds good today and reflects even modern society—in which all things become images and superficial, and the devices that create phenomena were hidden and became invisible. Either implicitly or deliberately, innumerable devices in this world define the world where we are living. And the image or symbol of the world that was formed in each of us never fails to influence and reflect on reality.

Then, what kind of device is created by those who are called artists?

 

Holy Light

During serving the army, I had an experience to decorate the window of the chapel built at the military camp. All I did was to paint the European stained glass-like images or pattern with acrylics on the shabby windows of the prefabricated building. After finishing this, when I saw the rays of sunlight, which had hitherto been so ordinary, filtering through the windows, I found that the plain, dry, and dull place suddenly turned into a holy one. Or, more precisely, it seemed to me that those who entered it felt and acted as if they were in the space that became much more sacred than before. The fact that a mere modulation of light made such a dramatic change of the atmosphere of a space was very impressive to me, I felt the sacredness or holiness of space was something that could be created and controlled.

In 2005, I created and displayed Holy Light in German: an installation consisting of discarded plastic containers, and emitting the light of the stained glass. It was intended to be a kind of reflective instrument that would be able to make the viewer have an experience of going and coming between a sacred light and the source of the very phenomenon, rather than a stained glass decoration for hallowing a particular space.

- Human being is at once a being of reason who tries to figure out what lies beneath the phenomenon and understand the world, and a being of sense or a being of contradiction who is carried away and deceived by the phenomenon.

 

The Plastic Ocean

I read a newspaper article that plastic waste dumped by people was washed out to sea, creating small island sized bodies of garbage floating here and there. It reported that concentrations of rubbish that had drifted from China were occasionally found on the coastline of South Korea. This made me think of a world map made up of lands (continents), the shape of which was determined by marking the floating plastic pieces on a tabula rasa space.

I asked people to draw a world map off the top of their head. Come to think of it, we all imagine a world map to be mainly composed of lands, as if the space excepting them was empty. We are apt to throw away trash to empty space. Perhaps, we may regard the ocean as a space where we can dump something endlessly.


Four Cities

I am thinking about cities that, although I can see their images any time through the window of the internet and media, I cannot approach in reality, interrupted by obstacles such as wars, ideologies, radioactivity, and the like.

Those cities that not only exist actually, but also are about a day’s distance from where I live, sometimes seem to be a virtual space that has no connection to here and is visible only through the window of the image conveyed by the media.

In my work, the frames of showcases that are all disconnected with one another in reality project images of four cities, which are united as one in illusion.


Angel of the Mirror

In 2013, art works from the collection of the family of a former president Chun of South Korea appeared on the auction market. This news hit the headlines of every newspaper, which were full of stories that the family really had an eye for art, or that all of the works were sold at high prices. While reading them, I was doubtful about whether art was nothing but a decoration for power and rich and came to have a deep suspicion. There was a craft object in the collection, called “Angel of the Mirror,” a white angle holding a gem-mirror. I imagined that the mirror was constantly reflecting the image of a city Gwangju to its owner, like the magic mirror in the fairytale.


- The origin of something sacred, beautiful, or attractive is often occupied by its opposite. It reminds me of a flower that takes root deep in the opposite and gets nutrition from it. The two worlds are antonyms or enemies to each other and simultaneously, partners that make it possible for each other to exist.

 
 
Copyright 2022. Changwon Lee. All rights reserved.