Booth A4
Sabrina Amrani is pleased to present Of Softness and Hardness, a solo presentation of works by Timothy Hyunsoo Lee for India Art Fair 2018.
Of Softness and Hardness is was initially inspired by an interpretation and meditation on Salvador Dali’s magnum opus, The Persistence of Memory. The painting offered the clearest glimpse into Dali’s philosophies of life – both in actuality, but also in its relative experience. He violated the boundaries between softness and hardness, imbuing a existential burden onto symbols and objects.
Since our birth, people have sought to track their relative position on their lifeline – birthdays, anniversaries, milestones, etc. But what is the significance of time, since it is solely an experiential phenomenon? Time, and the experience of it, is completely relative – we try to make sense of this abstract concept by tracking the passage of time. We can’t track the present; only record it in its passing.
If time is relative, and wholly experiential, then what is then the significance of our lives? We spend our lives counting, constantly, towards an end: when we all die. The acting of counting is interesting; its relationship to time is an existential conundrum like that of the chicken and the egg. Numbers exist to track, to contain, to measure, and to make order from disorder. And we attach such sentimentality in counting – a special date, someone’s age, or the anniversary of a special occasion. But numbers are meaningless without a context – their significance is only realized when the counting stops. We necessarily count towards a finite and final moment, when we take our last breath.
Of Softness and Hardness consists of watercolor paintings, sculptures, and installations that use symbolic objects and spaces and distort them to imbue a “existential urgency” as Dali often did. The prevalence of a celestial, limbo-like cloud imagery sets the viewer in a purgatory: an environment of spatial ambiguity and temporal arrest. A space where time essentially stops.
Timothy Hyunsoo Lee will also present a monumental work in the Projects sector of the fair titled 1.000 attempts at a reconciliation, a piece composed of one thousand elements created with gold leaf.
Gold leaf plays a particularly dominant role as an object that has historically symbolized immortality. In this project the artists plays around with both the historical usage of gold, mainly in gilding, and its symbolic significance of contemporary culture; that is, the association of gold with love: to chain immortality to the most mortal sentiment. The artist gild objects and images because the age of gilding is a great metaphor for the experience of life and love. Gold leaf is delicate, and perfectly silken until slightly disturbed at which point it creases, ripples, tears, and can never be restored, only repaired. Gilding also represents a mask: to cover an object’s identity with an illusionary veil. A veil of power, of immortality, of timelessness.
1.000 attempts at a reconciliation is a project created during a residency at the Basu Foundation in Kolkata and is the second collaboration of Thibault Poutrel Contemporary Art and Sabrina Amrani for the production of a work of art. The project is generously sponsored by Ahuja Framers.

mpefm INDIA fair art press release