Jinlee

이진경은 감각과 직관을 바탕으로 작품을 창조하는 예술가로, 전통적인 판화의 틀을 넘어 다양한 매체에서 프린트의 정의를 확장하고, 그 과정을 통해 새로운 시각적 언어를 만들어 나간다. 색과 형태를 통해 감정과 의미를 탐구하며, 감각적인 직관을 바탕으로 의미를 창출하고 다듬는 방식으로 작업을 전개한다. 현대 사회 속 정서적 불안을 억누르기보다 그것을 이해하고, 각 작업마다 자신만의 독특한 세계관을 만들고 그 깊이를 더해 간다. 언어와 색을 다루는 작품뿐만 아니라, 물질성과 구조를 실험하는 입체 작품을 통해 존재와 관계, 그리고 그 안에 숨겨진 의미를 탐구한다.

Jin Lee is an artist and printmaker born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, and currently lives and works in Chicago, IL, after achieving a BFA and MFA in Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. By assembling estranged elements of shapes, colors, and rhythm of patterns into harmonized movements and energy, Lee creates prints, sculptures, and furniture design. Her practice shows the courage to embrace the uncertainty in life, depicting the difference and repetition.

Print Statement

I interrogate the authority of the physical perception as the universal trigger to exploit in society by proving the existence of "the future family," a mythical concept that I took the role of the mother. My virtual family gains physicality through images, sculptures, furniture, books, and digital works, which I regard as prints. The prints are simulacra of the future family.

I suggest the intense fractions of the social issue are based on overtrusted reproductivity of print media. Alongside the development of civilization, printed matter gained its credibility based on the ability that exact messages can exist over time and space and share them throughout the world. Advanced technology and networks nowadays liberate the power of the reproduction of data. Everyone can create new information, and it spreads globally in a second. The information in our times lost its credibility, and the individual's beliefs became the fact with homemade evidence. We live in a time where everybody is correct, but the others are wrong.

Every creature begins by printing the DNA of its ancestors. It is impossible to blame humans for blind faith in prints because they share the same trajectory of existence caused by the libido or the urge to be understood. 

Here is a comparison of the mechanism of life and print.

1. A Life is an action, perceiving impressions of happening.

2. The happening never changes.

3. A Life is a collection of perceived serial perceptions bound on a living creature.

4. Libido is one of the byproducts of '1, 2, and 3'.

5. A phenomenon is also a life due to '1, 2, and 3'; the happening never changes, but perception can.

6. Living is a life-generating process, not a reproducing process.

7. The perceived idea is meaningless, but time creates syntax. Therefore life is meaningful.

8. However, time is an illusion.

9. Therefore, life is also an illusion.

10. A life exists forever, regardless of my existence.

1'. A print is an action, shifting an impression from a matrix.

2'. A matrix is never changed.

3'. A printed image is a collection of shifted single or several impressions bounded on a physical surface.

4'. Mass production is one of the byproducts of 1’, 2’, and 3'.

5'. A monotype is also a print due to 1’, 2’, and 3'; a matrix cannot be changed, but impressions can.

6'. Printing is an image-generating process, not a reproducing process.

7'. Ink is meaningless, but a politic creates syntax. Therefore a print is meaningful.

8'. However, politics is an illusion.

9'. Therefore, print is also an illusion.

10'. The printed image exists forever, regardless of its existence.

I practice asserting that reproductivity is only a byproduct of both print and human life. I focus on printing as a learning experience of how to make things. Artists prepare on matrixes imagining of the final image. The preparation processes are separated from the finished work. Repeating the estranged steps doesn't affect other iterations; therefore, prints can be reproduced. The artistic results fabricated from instruction disengage from their physical existence of time and space. 

Registration, the pool of ink, and surface material should be consistent as an edition set. To break the certainty of a concept, I play a game with the three features. Each play of game develops differently based on the players, chances, and strategies. Furthermore, printmaking can expand to 3 dimension objects, video, or performance with simple game instructions.  

By modifying the consistencies at each iteration, the set of prints achieves romantic quality from the uncertainty. The romance is driven by breaking patterns of the stillness of images and viewers' expectation of repetition. The "movement" and "fakeness" are two core qualities embodying the myth of the future family. I borrow motifs from domestic objects and scenes. Based on the market studies about how individuals are utilizing the subjects of house and family. I examine what physical features or situations keep the viewers' perceptions of the subjects and how to frustrate them by emasculating the universal function. 

Six intaglio series Fake Boxes (2018), cardboard furniture series Fake Furniture for the Future Family (2019), three sets of Fake Carry On Luggage Cases (2020), Two Perosns' Armchair (2021), and Embryos (2020-2021) are the series of fake objects trying their best to deceive the viewers to make them want to use the objects. These broken domestic objects ask the viewers to accept the failure of their stances as the user.

Also, it shows the same on the print portfolios. Most of my works are experimentation with creating various images that can be printed from a set of matrixes. Difference in Repetition (2018) is the first set of 16 multilayered lithographs inspired by Gill Deleuze's book Difference and Repetition. Beginning with the print set, I started to play with the T and Bar registration system, the composition of paper on the aluminum plate, colors of the ink, and the limitation of print presses. Shifted Impression (2018), Dance (2019), 3:1 Embryos (2020), and Elevators in the Construction Site (2021) are following lithograph portfolios, and they are the single-player game notations. Each image in the variable editioned prints shares a certain amount of kinship that keeps changing. The gathered images derive the rhythms in movement. 

The overturn of the power between the viewer and the unexpected deployments ruminates the abusive nature of society. It might be the reality, but not the future. I bring hope with the story of the future family that the realization is not to despair but to change. The impediment presented in my works is to unchain the systematic norms and broaden the magnanimity for others to deal with societal discrimination.