Leenam LEE
Nighthawks
65 inch LED TV_Single-channel video_Color_Sound_4min4sec
83.5 × 146 × 10 cm
2015
The work of the South Korean artist, Leenam LEE, exists at a crossroads between tradition and modernity, east and west, authenticity and duplication. He often refers to art history and thereby creates a dialogue between media technology and its cultural basis. Leenam LEE lifts the barriers between cultures and time periods, and questions the way we deal with art. He applies animation to art history in a manner befitting a master gardener turning and tailoring the natural beauty of the land, in order to enhance the view. He sees art as an open invitation, in which even those works from the classical period that appear hermetically sealed by time are ripe for recasting as the living breathing set for a tender technological intervention, or ‘reinvention’ as is more in keeping with the artist’s intentions. For Leenam LEE, perceived by some as graffitiing great works of art, his playful interference is entirely considered. In that he will animate only the essential elements of a still-life and landscape in order it becomes more than the sum of its parts. Applying as much sensitivity to a work as it might appear sensational, Nam wants to navigate through the visual constructs of representation itself, in a calculated attempt at creating narrative where for century`s there was only assumption.
Taking inspiration from a late-night diner in New York’s Greenwich Village, the American painter evokes a sense of loneliness and alienation hidden behind the glitz and glamor of the big city in one of the most recognizable paintings in American art, Nighthawks. Lee offers his ode to Hopper in this famous depiction of everyday urban scene illustrating the loneliness of city dwellers with his own artistic blend of simplicity and lyricism.