Hye Rim Lee
Video for Venice Biennale Architettura 2021
Artwork on display at San Clemente Palace Kempinski, Venice
Artist Statement
Hye Rim Lee is a Korean artist currently working in Seoul, New York, and Auckland. As an intermedia artist, she works across digital, sculptural, and performance platforms.
Lee’s 3D animation series invites the viewers to become enveloped by the world of TOKI, a magical and mythical 3D character that has been Lee’s creation and practice for over 20 years. When Lee experienced personal trauma from losing her sister from cancer, her works had a turning point as her interest moved into themes of life and death. Hence in 2014, TOKI has evolved into Black Rose Queen character, who resists the playful and passive readings of TOKI and connects to a more personal narrative, exploring ideas of isolation, oppression, lost love, hopelessness, and darkness of human mortality with the sensibility of imagination. Black Rose shows an artist’s journey into various personas, telling a narrative of constant transformation and identity mutation resulting from the contemporary demands. The reflection and refraction of one’s never-ending search for paradise - eternity, is multiplied and mirrored in her work.
Black Rose begins with the electronic and experimental sound embellished with a pensive and dreamy mood. The artist and the sound artist, Lady Fish intended to leave the viewer in a “blurry mind” with the ambiguous murmuring singing. Symbols, colors, and textures depict the richness and diverse characteristics of TOKI’s transformation from The Princess to The Rose and to The Queen. The black rose symbolizes death and lost love. By placing a large diamond in the background, Lee intends to create a sense of overwhelming emotion aroused by the reflection and refraction of the diamond textures in the animation. The angles and facets of the diamond symbolize the reflective nature of people’s lives. The artist believes that only an enlightened soul is able to refract its light from inside out and serve as a beacon to the outer world. Through the motif of the diamond, Lee expresses ideas about creation, life, and eternity.
Lee’s production of 3D animation is very much like a film production involving pre-production, production, and post-production.
The pre-production started in 2012 while Lee was living in New York. Once Lee conceived an idea and concept, she started drawing images and writing a synopsis, script, and storyboard to make an animation production plan. Typically, the sound for the animation is created during the production stage but for Black Rose, the tune was created before the animatics with sound artist Ladyfish using an app that converts a voice into an instrument. For its production, Lee’s animator, Greg Smith, started making animatics with Maya software based on the storyboard. In the final post-production stage, the masterpiece is chosen out of hundreds of versions made during the process. The final work goes through a long HD rendering process using Adobe After Effects.
The first version of the animation was produced in black and white with funding from Creative New Zealand in Auckland in 2014. Lee resumed the animation in 2019 and finished the colored version in February 2021, going through two major pandemic lockdowns.
For Hyerim Lee, the making of 3D animation is like giving birth. From the conception of the ideas to the final production, the artist goes through many changes and challenges, but Lee sees that the final render proves that the pain is worth enduring. At the final stage of the intensive production of Black Rose, Lee testifies that she was able to enter into an isolated space filled with rich inspirations where she was deeply connected with God.
Visiting Venice again with Waterfall Gallery in the middle of the pandemic is especially special for Hye Rim Lee as she worked with Berengo Studio for several projects including a collateral exhibition for the Venice Biennale, Glasstress (2009, 2011, 2019), Unbreakable, and Women in Glass (2020). She is excited to present Black Rose which she created in the desire to transform the city by bringing the message of hope and restoration to the wounded world.
Featured Artwork
Black Rose, 2021 (still from video)
3D animation (4k), stereo sound
5:22:00 loop
Edition 1/7
Four TOKIs, 2011
C print, Perspex face mounting
Edition 1/5
36H x 36W in
Bunny Luv, pink, 2010
C print, Perspex face mounting
Edition 1/5
36H x 36W in