Black is the absence of color, but it is also a color with a symbolic meaning. In 1915, Malevich rejected the expansion of art-as-representation with his black square, while also ushering in a new paradigm in painting. His work was rooted in an emptiness beyond the representational nature of painting, where everything had been cleared away. He was also attempting to reach a realm of the absolute through total abstraction, influenced by nothing in nature. This was a destructive element, but it also created a new chapter in the history of art. The square-based geometric shapes that he had chosen were akin to a spiritual world without objects—one that transcended the real world. In contrast, today’s images resemble a kind of data. No narrative is present in them, and they seem to simply float outside of context. We encounter images every day through handheld devices, and even the torrents of information become wordless images bereft of context. With pre-existing algorithms constantly supplying them from behind the screen, regardless of the user’s wishes, we reach a situation where the users themselves cannot make judgments about the other symbols or meanings visible in the images.

Seungchan Lee perceives these casually passing images as something like raw data, without meaning or narrative. He applies his own algorithms to build the canvas of a painting, and, like the black square before him, submits what is provided by the visual world to a process of abstraction. The six canvases placed by the door are part of Lee’s early Black Square series: repeatedly outputting images on the screen, which might be referred to as raw data, he more actively erases their individual meaning to achieve perfectly “black” shapes. In this way, untitled is designed to match the horizontal and vertical proportions of the site so that the image is perceived differently from all directions, while the sides of the canvases are layered as extensions of the output, alluding to the spatial strata concealed by the thin images.

The sheet-based work that hangs along the floor and the walls leading from the entrance is a reconfiguration of work from Lee’s second “black square” series, called 2A, in which all of them have been connected together. While the untitled canvas is made of repeated output layers, the main work updates the artist’s unique algorithm through varied outputs of the horizontal and vertical ratios. The image’s form is altered as new images are layered and a new dark canvas is applied on top. The data-image flows encountered with the sheets’ spatial way of being pose questions about the source through their differing proportions and layers, while the footprints on the image lead the viewer to imagine the presence and absence of other viewers standing on top.

Walking along the sheets on the floor, the viewer finds BF and 4C over the left wall. These works have been submitted to a different output algorithm. Here is where Lee’s active physical intervention in the algorithm begins. Creating outputs with blank sheets on top of the paper, he tears away or cuts the new layered portions and places paint on them before repeating the output process. This is his first attempt at his own style of “output paintings,” and it can also be viewed as an experiment with freeing himself from variations based on mechanical processes—especially those that involve the use of Photoshop or similar programs. What is interesting here is the unique texture that arises from the tearing of the outputs with layered paints or sheets of paper: it becomes a tactile trace beyond the surface-level visual nature of the digital image. While Lee’s earlier work represented a process of representation captured in the outputting process, the traces materially visualize the artist’s presence through evidence of his artistic actions and movements.

This interest is amplified in his most recent paintings. Forming his canvases without reference images, he reveals them purely through the act of scraping paint away. What remains on the resulting canvases is merely the artist’s physicality, translated into fuller material. Additionally, the new work adopts a different approach to titling. For instance, Albedo means “white,” but it also refers to the white inner flesh of an orange. When we connect the title with the work, it raises questions of what is referenced between the color white and the white of an orange. But the sense conveyed by the title is merely a clue, without any dependence on the image. The individual viewer must layer their own image association onto a painting that is realized through traces.

Another work that addresses the artist’s presence is skin pocket photo (20150629–193818), which starts from the black screen accidentally captured by the artist’s phone while it was in his pocket. After printing this picture out, Lee left his own marks on it through a process of attaching and tearing off masking tape. The tape in question was an essential tool in his past work, helping him to connect and bind sheets of printed paper. The taping survives only through its marks, summoning into the present the artist in his past act of creation. The addition of fingerprints and ink stains caused by printer flaws captures the artist’s presence in clear and rhythmic ways.

Corrosion is a process that happens when a metal transforms into a different compound through chemical actions such as oxidation. It is a phenomenon that becomes irreversible the instant it occurs, and it also has the quality of spreading. Corrosive Scar explores the marks left behind in the process of images spreading and reproducing: the chain reactions and layering of outputs. In other words, it is an examination of the presence of the artist approaching the image and the physicality (the mark) left behind as evidence of that.

Credit

Participating artist : LEE Seungchan
Curated by CHOI Heeyeon (Primary Practice)
Text by CHOI Heeyeon (Primary Practice)
Design by CHOI Jonghyun
Installation technician : Mujindongsa
Photo by CJY ART STUDIO (CHO Junyong)

Supported by MNJ Foundation