Lot 1018: LEE JAE SAM

LEE JAE SAM
(Born in 1960)
Beyond There
charcoal on canvas
130 x 162 cm. (51 1/2 x 63 3/4 in.) x 2 pieces
Painted in 2000 (2)

Lee Jae Sam's background space seems somehow separate, existing on its own as a tranquil black shadow that creates strong visual contrast with the finely detailed central subject. Despite being 'empty' space', it is what the artist wants us to focus on and think about, as if to say that the real essence of the subject can perhaps be found only in what we cannot see on the surface. As Buddhist might say 'all appearance is illusory.' Generally, we see only the outsides of things, such as veins of leaves or the roughness of tree bark, but the outside of thing cannot convey for us its essence. Yet even on the surface, a highly realistic treatment and a larger-than life presentation of a painting's subject creates an unusual cohesion, allowing the viewer to vividly imagine the drift of a breeze or the splash of moonlight over the scene, creating a three-dimensional world with its own unique space and imaginative suggestions. These things cannot be directly captured in the picture surface, but exist in the tranquil blackness of the background. The openness of the background space becomes the perfect point of entry through which the artist expresses his reality, the essence of objects as well as their appearances.

Lee raises charcoal paintings to a level of realism in which visual effects communicate not only surface features of the subject but a deeper sense of their underlying reality. He works with basic charcoal pencils to return to the most fundamental element of painting: expressing the essence of nature. The black of charcoal absorbs all light, giving it unusual depth and implications. Charcoal is Lee's 'ink'. This seemingly plain color contains all colors within itself, and portrayed in this kind of 'ink', Lee's open spaces seem to contain limitless possibilities.

Encoded deep within the luminescence of the charcoal, both of these two paintings pull and push the audience's perception, instigating imaginative power and intense romanticism, despite the restrained neatness of his artistic technique. Lee's earlier work of Beyond There (Lot 1018) may impress no where near romantic at first, possibly due to its meticulous depiction that awaken the tangibility of the bristle hairline of the protagonist; However with Lee's enchanting control over the radiance he gleams over the head with the glossy characteristic of charcoal, he creates a fantastical world of a forest that is charmed with a romantic scent of moonlight. This initial sentiment Lee felt in his earlier work has been nurtured throughout his growth as an artist, despite the clear transformation in subject matter. Both the paintings transmit the same atmospheric phenomena, one of Lee's own experience and reminiscence that he cannot forget.

Densely packed and tightly described, the artist still manages to exert expressive grace in opening up the planar for the audience to transcend over the obvious image into the darkness where the intrinsic link between his previous work of the portrait and the bamboos aspire to a form of naturalism. Each painting is composed with precision and simultaneously isolated for observation. The blankness of the canvas pulls the audience into the lively texture of the head, mimicking the trees and grass of a forest, where the audience are engulfed suddenly by the up-close theatrical presence of the bamboo. The spatial context from its frontal profile, expands 'beyond there' to a serene enlightenment, a belief that nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature. As reality itself is confined, it is changing and elusive as the mystifying charm of the deep forest that mirrors the self-consciousness of the artist.