Lot 18: Jae Hoon Lee Girl on a Blanket digital photograph

Jae Hoon Lee Girl on a Blanket digital photograph on vinyl 420mm x 560mm In Lee's previous video art, he has explored the binary relationship he has experienced and traversed as a Korean artist working in foreign environments (notably Australia and currently New Zealand). Themes associated with the relationship between foreigner versus local, tourist versus native and mobility versus immobility are explored. Lee's aim is to expand (through film and photographic documentation) his own experiences of dislocation and the realities experienced by "adapting and corresponding between two different countries". Lee has documented the experiences of these 'typecast' people operating in the local and or foreign environment. In Girl on a Blanket, a nude woman lies across the picture plane, atop a richly upholstered feminine fabric. Spatial dimensions have collapsed as her body descends or in absorbed into the textured space beneath her. The surface is heavily pixilated and overwhelmingly saturated in the blotchy muted colour of skin. Her facial features are fading into the surface beneath her, what stops this descent is the solid mass of hair and overt staring eyes which ground her and question the viewers own gaze. The work evokes questions relating to issues of desire and freedom, hostility and surrender. Jae Hoon Lee is represented by Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland. LH