Allegorical Desire Shown by Metamorphic Animal

Gallery DOS is organizing a relay project with the theme ¡®Addiction that Permeates Daily Life¡¯ during the first half of 2013. Four artists who were selected by a contest will successively have a solo exhibition, and ¡®Desire Unfolded on a Wretched Shell¡¯ by Eunhee Lee is the second exhibition. There are many forms of addictions in human life. Words in the daily life such as the internet, shopping, and game are combined with the word addiction and create a new dependence. For this perspective, artists are people who are addicted to art. They feel alive through expressive activity. Communication between the art and the public is as difficult as that between addicts and non-addicts. There have been endless attempts to overcome the limit of perception of the invisible, and the subsequent change seems unnoticeable.
This contest was aimed to make art addictive as part of our lives that people cannot live without. The process of addiction through the exhibition will become an opportunity to open the diversity and value of art to the public.

We are living in a world where it is familiar to consume something. It is the effect of the capitalism on our life as the desire is deeply rooted in our consciousness. Invisible control of the civilization changes desire of an individual into the form of consumption. Especially, development of the mass media creates so many external stimulations that constantly capture us in desire. Satisfaction from consumption becomes boredom and then deficiency. The empty chain reaction of the addiction of desire eventually makes humans fundamentally deficient. The imperfect subject in this world tries to metamorphose toward perfection, and Eunhee Lee attempts to let us face ourselves who are addicted to consumerist mass culture by using metamorphic animals.

The artistic meaning of metamorphic animals is that the animals have lost their true self and disguise and make up themselves according to how the outside world views them. The ambiguous organisms in the paintings respond to the look of the flowers, which represent the public, and become subordinate to their stimulation. The metamorphosis process of various types of animals or plants by interaction is a metaphor of modern people who are not free from the eyes of the society but have the will to life. The artist reflects this covert suppression by society in the Bandwagon Series. Bandwagon effect refers to a tendency of the public that the opinion or taste provided by the mass media becomes accepted as the opinion or taste of the majority, and the public cannot resist the huge current. Development of the mass media and information sharing provides various stimulations and people submit their desire to others without realizing. The threat to human consciousness is a danger and also ever-interesting subject matter for artists.
Characteristics of her artworks include contrast between vivid colors, use of pattern, and symmetrical images.
The strong stimulation from the flat primary color, which is characteristic of Oriental paintings, resembles the nature of desire that asks for stronger stimulation. Beyond traditional techniques, the sparkling objet on the canvas reveals futility behind glamor with lightness. This breathes liveliness to metamorphic animals that are not normal. The design element of pattern controls tension and rhythm in the canvas, and the frame composition brings unity to relationship between elements. Metamorphic animals, which were interpreted by Lee¡¯s oriental sense, also remind viewers of imaginary animals that might appear in folklores and legends. In her recent works, symmetrical images maximize emotion or shape to reveal or hide them. Metamorphic animals that are facing each other suggest conflict between two emotions and discrepancy between the reality and ideal. Instead of self-reflection, we identify ourselves with others and believe that matching our desire to the subject is the way to perfection. The Siamese metamorphic animals represent artistic sublimation for self-reflection of blinded modern people who lost self-identity.

Lee talks about the modern people who are addicted to desire based on other people¡¯s eyes through imaginary animals. Modern people who chose to live in the civilization cannot be free from other people¡¯s eyes and influence. The process where individual diversity is neglected and molded into the majority¡¯s idea is parodied by metamorphic animals. After all, the artist seeks to express conflicting reality that capitalism liberates the society¡¯s desire and isolates individuals through art. It depends on the viewers to think about whether their lives are based on real desire from the inside, from the organisms metamorphosed from desire.