We featured Seoul-based artist Jee Young Lee this summer with her staggering series, The Moment. Lee sometimes spends months building incredibly elaborate scenes by hand for the sake of taking a single photograph—all without the use of digital manipulation. Confined to the small space of her 360 x 410 x 240 cm studio, she painstakingly constructs every last detail of the set, from painted backgrounds to handmade props to objects suspended from the ceiling. The results are surreal, dreamlike images.
At the focal point of nearly every photo is the artist herself, her gaze never quite meeting the viewer’s directly. Inspired by Korean fables or personal experiences, these imaginative self-portraits explore “her quest for an identity, her desires and her frame of mind,” according to OPIOM Gallery.
“Her creations act as a catharsis which allows her to accept social repression and frustrations. The moment required to set the stage gives her time to meditate about the causes of her interior conflicts and hence exorcise them; once experienced, they in turn become portents of hope.”
Via My Modern Met
By Jenny Zhang