Bongseon Rice Mill 2

Jae Yong Rhee

ARTIST STATEMENT

Memories of the Gaze Series

Archival pigment print
2012

Edition of 5 - 36.9 x 24.6 cm (50.8 x 38.6 cm with frame)

Artwork comes framed

DETAILS

Medium: Photography

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jae Yong Rhee | South Korea

Born in Yeosu, Korea in 1969, Jae Yong Rhee majored in Visual Communication Design at Hongik University, where he also completed his MA in Product Design. After working in the field of commercial photography, he returned to the fine art scene in 2010.

He is known for his painterly photographs, often experimenting with the basic concept of photography in his "Memories of the Gaze" series, restoring in a single photograph all of the bygone moments lost in time by taking pictures of a single object in the same location over a prolonged period of time and layering them into one final image. The converged landscape captures elaborate and ongoing changes in his subjects' surroundings, which include landscapes, city construction sites, flowers and rice mills.

Rice mills are Rhee’s most recent subjects in his Memories of the Gaze series, following redevelopment sites in Seoul in his earlier works. The old fashioned rice mills are symbolic of the disappearing rural culture in modern Korea, which is among many Korean traditions fading away in rapid development and excessive urbanization. As he layers the numerous images of his subjects photographed over time, an absolute time zone is created, where the present is brought together with its past and future traces; Rhee invites his viewers to a dream-like space where their dormant memories are revived into reality.

His first solo show was held at Olive Gallery (Seoul) in 1998, De Chocolate Gallery (Seoul) in 2010, Gallery EM (Seoul) in 2012, Art Basel HK in 2012, and Art Fair Tokyo in 2014. His works have shown in group shows at a number of museums and galleries, including Hong-Ik University Museum (Seoul) in 1997, Sai Gallery (Seoul) in 1999, Hallim Museum (Daejeon) in 2000, Gallery EM (Seoul) in 2010, Insa Art Center (Seoul) in 2011, Culture Station Seoul 284 (Seoul) in 2012, Espace Louis Vuitton (Singapore) in 2013 as a finalist in 2012-13 Sovereign Asian Art Prize, and Delfina Foundation (London) in 2014. Rhee has also participated in art festivals, such as the 1999 Arles Photo Festival in France. His works are included in the collections of SK Networks and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Bank, Korea.
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