Exploration of the World of 'The Thing As It Is'
Bae Taejoo (critic)
Lee Gi-seong is a steel powder artist. He pays attention to the world of physical senses, not the world of thinking. It does not mean the realm abstracted with notions. Therefore, concerning the world which remains unchanged forever, an artist refers to the world which is open by confidence and interaction, facing towards chaos.
With the reddish energy generated by oxidized steel powder, recent plane operations would not be available either. In fact, it is a process of exploring the world for energy dissipation. The color which reveals in a network being formed by interactions between materials and work environments reveals a different degree of oxidation. It would be brightened by dryness in the wind or sink in the dark due to dampness in the air. Such reverberation contains diversity. The entrance of inter-materials, inter-substances and neighboring realms is being deepened in color. The color resonating images with weight and depth unveils the existence of steel powder being oxidized. It represents the color of finiteness which is irrecoverable with the hard property of steel. It also means the surface of an incident which transforms usable energy into an unusable one. In Lee Gi-seong's recent works, color is not an element added to their surface. Instead, it contains the world which cannot be expressed by color. Even though it is represented by color, it refers to a space in which color changes are accumulated by entering into neighboring realms and through diverse actions. Oxidized steel powder symbolizes the ventilation of its extinction, which represents a gesture confirming finiteness. 'Moment Mori' was an alarm on the arrogance of humans who believe that things could last forever. It is his ostensive way of expression, insisting that nothing could last forever anywhere in the world. In this sense, Lee Gi-seong's works are the exploration of 'The Thing As It Is'.
His touch traces down the world of raw things. Steel powder is scattered by an artist's touch, and materials and environmental conditions are added. Then, a latent space is being formed. His image is not a space in which something is being reproduced and drawn. It opens an invisible point instead of revealing an invisible world. As Gilles Deleuze interpreted an incident that the conditions of problems include incidents, cut ends, cut surfaces and junctions, not being formed on the 'surface' only, a writer focuses on the breakup and extinction of things in steel powder which appears after corrosion.
Lee Gi-seong's works represent a process of spreading resulting from changes, not the world of quiet meditation. In addition, they revealed diverse spectra which contain relations which are deemed useless in social relationships as well as physical realms which are detected in coincidence. After all, the physically sensed world is a realm where a human life has settled. His installation art with rust on objects such as musical instruments, cameras and books is a description on the fact that installation toward distinction could be destructed as a useless thing, even with the culture to build and perpetuate an order. He would attempt to get the discarded natural objects or ready-made articles as materials for such description. In his installation work titled 'Inconvenient Truth', we would express the crisis of human and nature which have been dumped according to the logic of capitalism. A tree with its roots cut off represents a scene of abandoned nature and lifestyle under the logic of capitalism. It could also symbolize the others who fall into just objects.
A series of steel powder-based works have evolved into various forms such as atypical design with sharp edges, rust all over the objet and plane with spreading color. Recent plane works are in the opposite side of the operation fixing tension generated during interactions with magnet and a temporary order brought by the tension to the screen. The traces spreading over the plane space in relaxation remind of a great number of things which have been piled up over time. Lee Gi-seong's works happen between things making and those being made. They would be absorbed or come up on the screen with thickness. The steel powder in his hand puts down the property of hardness. A screen is a scene where numerous actions take place. The traces remaining on a plane space are not the time as a space spreading after oxidation, but the time as a space where actions happen.
The emergence of being is always glorious. Even though it is destined to disappear, the world which reveals its own color by sparing a space for neighboring realms is bright. The flow is irrevocable. The occurrence of a finite world sneaks into an indefinable realm, bringing the world into his works. The color of the screen gives up its color to the darkness and falls into the sunset which keeps all colors.