Notwithstanding

On July 1, Obscura will present Notwithstanding by Jeongwoong Lee, an artist who creates fantasy narratives with multi-layered symbols. Lee has been active internationally holding exhibitions in places such as the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. Notwithstanding will mark Lee’s first solo exhibition in South Korea in nearly ten years, where twelve works of painting, including new and old, will be featured. His paintings portray imaginary narratives that traverse reality and fantasy in a manner unique to the medium of painting.​ Lee combines not only various images but also different points in time and places, and presents them in fragmentations. In his work, there are also a number of conflicting symbolic codes such as the Korean white veil and Japanese kimono; black stones and white marble; burning wood and processed, exposed wood; and flowing streams and closed water taps. A general reading of such work would take a note of these symbols to decipher their meaning, which is analogous to a process of approaching “the real” through “things.” In his previous series Reverie and Laputa, the interpretation of their symbolic imagery served as an identity of the work; it no longer holds in the new work. Rather, they function as a symbolic veil, which distracts the viewer from approaching the work in a meaningful way. In this vein, Notwithstandingrepresents a groundbreaking point in Lee’s artistic journey since his Laputa exhibition. Notwithstanding can be understood as a turning point/watershed moment/threshold where the previously symbolism-heavy tenor of Lee’s work shifts to the non-symbolic. In this exhibition, Lee’s fantasies are less about tracing some sort of transcendental Real that gave rise to such fantasies than immanent developments within imagination. It can also be transformed into a form of literature. The titles of the work, such as Old Trees and White Toads, Split and Collapsed Along the Water Path, The Tiled Red Wall, The Ritual Dance for Burned the Old Tree, and The Myst, are descriptive, which create relationships between paintings and unexpected imagination. The objective description stretches the imaginative elements of the narrative. Meanwhile, Lee makes another suggestion with the title, In the Rain." Rather than starting his painting from a certain narrative, Lee has been inspired to write fictions by his own finished work. Thus, the narrative is not a guide to the work. Rather, it's an invitation to the realm of imagination. In Notwithstanding, the beginning and the end of the narrative complete the circle. "I give you the idea, and everything will change when it stops raining."