Exhibitions 2008
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May 14 – September 21, 2008
Urban Tree and Tree—Echo: Videos by Lee Jong-Suk
Telfair’s Jepson Center for the Arts
South Korean artist Lee Jong-Suk utilizes video art to explore the ways in which the growing urbanization of mankind’s environment affects the human experience. In a series of videos created over the past five years, he uses the recurring metaphor of trees—whether their incongruous presence in a city sidewalk or their conspicuous absence from an urban skyline—to address this universal topic.
In the video Tree—Echo, the projected image is composed of two halves, in traditional diptych form. On the left, the delicate branches of a row of trees growing in the inhospitable soil of a city sidewalk sway rhythmically, almost as if under water. The grace of their movement cannot conceal the fact that the barren trees possess no leaves, are confined in metal braces to support their fragile trunks, and have had many of their branches crudely chopped to create a clear passage for the city’s vehicles and pedestrians. In his artist’s statement, Lee expresses his fascination with such trees, which display “a tenacious desire for existence [and] maintain their lives in…places unsuitable to them.” In the right half of the video, a row of human figures echoes the movement of the trees, with
swaying arms and twisting torsos. Like the malnourished yet resolute trees that line a city’s sidewalks, they must overcome the wounds inflicted by the harshness of their daily existence.
The video Urban Tree does not depict trees themselves, but rather the man-made structures that so commonly serve as arboreal substitutes in the urban landscape. Tall, spindly street lights and wire-laden utility poles flash by on the screen, as if viewed through the sunroof of a fast moving car. These structures remind us that, like a dense forest connected by a vast network of interwoven roots and branches, our man-made landscape is connected by the wires and cords carrying the electricity and information that are the lifeblood of today’s society.
In both videos, the images appear to be projected onto sheets of antique or handmade paper. This effect only heightens the paradox inherent in these works, which express such discomfort with the state of today’s man-made, technology-dependent society, yet ultimately rely upon contemporary technology to communicate their message.
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