Hollow | Jei Ryung Lee | Winner of One Hundred Days SocialTrack

Hollow – a photographic cinematic sequence presented by London based artist Jey Lee – deals with the dichotomy between pureness and darkness in children’s night dreams as symbol of the difficulty and loneliness of growing up in an increasingly careless society. In her piece the sky at night become a potential playground where children are allowed to free their imagination in a way that is forbidden to adults, constrained in their status quo.

While wandering without expectations in one of the busiest parts of London, Jei found herself staring intently at an unidentified object randomly hanging in the air. Her curiosity and artistic sensitivity triggered her desire to understand what the object was, spending a considerable amount of time just looking at it.  The object was just part of staging structure for an outdoor cinema’s projector. She recorded what it was and where it was, and took notice of the time she spent on it. Then she started filming and photographing interesting yet unidentified forms. By rearraging and overlayering them based on the study of time perception in the human brain, she created her own Unidentified Flying Object. The experience of being lost, like a kid who lets go of his mother’s hand when something attracts his sight, moved her. She then decided to leverage this experience to create “Hollow”. She flew to Samcheonpo (Korea) to rekindle again her emotions as a little kid playing in her grandfather’s house but with a grown-up perspective.

For Jei this became her artwork narrative, leading naturally to how delicate and fragile children are in this fast-paced society, pressured to become competitive and over-achieving since a young age while losing the power of endless imagination that typically expressed with playing and games. To develop an interactive and immersive artistic experience between her work and the viewer, Jei built a spatial installation simulating an environment where people can be set free. The installation is meant to hit the audience on multiple levels. After an immediate reaction to the aesthetics of the design, each viewer can live a unique and personal experience and play with their environment like children.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Spatial experience is one of the most important part in my work. Where we exist and what we perceive is what marks all the memories that we have. To understand our universe, we need to see the world in several different dimensions. Exploration of space and time generates not a single answer or solution, but inspiration, imagination and emotions remain a uniquely personal tool of understanding. For this reason, I work on designing experiences, sharing my experiences with an audience to create an new universe together. I am constantly trying to interpret space differently by inventing a new way of exploring and traversing, to ultimately reach a new level of freedom for myself and the viewers. 

About Reyung Jei Lee

Born in South Korea in 1986, Jei Lee started to develop her artistic project in 2010. She has been showing her work to the public as interactive experimental research. While studying for her BA in Industrial Design at Kookmin University in Seoul, she realized she wanted to focus on space as key component of her art and design world. After moving to London in 2009, she pursued her BA in Interior and Spatial Design at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, graduating in July 2012. Although she has been studying design, her passion to be an artist has influenced her projects in various way. One Hundred Days by ContaminateNYC will be the first official exhibition that will introduce her work to the world.