No one dies alone
Timothy Hyunsoo Lee
SABRINA AMRANICalle Madera 23. 28004 Madrid, Spain
T: +34 627 539 884 e-mail: Exhibition dates : 13 January > 28 February 2016 |
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 A Study of Serenity, and of Death, 2015. Watercolor on Arches Aquarelle paper. 113x113 cm. Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani and the artist |
 Forever Lost, Always Dreaming, 2015 Branch, paper and textile. 48x62 cm. Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani and the artist |
 I’m so sorry (The Crusades), 2015. Watercolor on Arches Aquarelle paper. 113x168 cm. Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani and the artist |
Sabrina Amrani presents “No One Dies Alone”, the second solo exhibition of Korean-American artist Timothy Hyunsoo Lee at the gallery, bringing together a number of paintings and interventions, relocating the artist’s entire practice from a solipsistic introspection of traumatic memory and consciousness, towards a newfound extrospection; a process of cognition directed outward – a process of apprehending existents of the external world. Earlier on, grounded in the experience of radical otherness, the artist explored seamlessly the conditions of immigration and psychological disorder through repetition as reconstruction –of trauma, of history, of heritage, opening up almost into abstraction, and mapping out his internal world. In this new body of work, Hyunsoo Lee externalizes this search, in order to embody and embed objects with a consciousness beyond the narrated I, speaking to the viewer from an infinite temporal distance.
“No One Dies Alone” is born out of curiosity about the concreteness of existence outside of the space of consciousness, riddled as it is with unpredictable uncertainties and risks, and largely defined by the event horizon of finality which is mortality. This unidirectionality of time, cutting mysteriously through lived time, heading towards an unmistakable and certain end, yet absent from the internal processes of pure consciousness, is rich in material paradoxes. It animates Hyunsoo Lee’s quest to investigate the nature of images as a fleeting presence of memory, articulating an intermediate space between life and death. By means of this presence, more often ghostly and spectral, the artist is not only intervening time in order to slow or bypass death, but asking whether the experience of mortality, to which he turns to for the first time, is private or public, a solitary passing or a movement within a community? What role does personal extinction play in the community of memory?
In his own death portrait –a tradition in Korea, “Lotto Lotto (Farewell)” (2015), the artist covers his own portrait in gold leaf, then scratches it off to reveal the image, as if latently coming from another world, or being discovered in a distant future, or out of a fundamental break in the symmetry between past and future. With uncanny playfulness, Hyunsoo Lee imbues the lottery ticket with the meaning it acquired for Korean immigrants in the United States and the promise of immediate wealth. The American dream unfolds as an ambivalent sequence of collective but unfulfilled desires. Similarly, the question of the American dream is explored through the neon work “Serenity” (2015), where the artist translates his human touch into a commercial inscription. Neon lights are associated in consumerist cultures as a dramatic form of advertisement – their mesmerizing glow beckons an audience to interact with its message. For Hyunsoo Lee, torn between two cultures and identities, the neon lights represented a beacon and triggering memories of his first interaction with New York City at Times Square. The word flickers, in a pale blue, threatening to extinguish any second – a nod to the transience of our existence.
“No One Dies Alone” is born out of curiosity about the concreteness of existence outside of the space of consciousness, riddled as it is with unpredictable uncertainties and risks, and largely defined by the event horizon of finality which is mortality. This unidirectionality of time, cutting mysteriously through lived time, heading towards an unmistakable and certain end, yet absent from the internal processes of pure consciousness, is rich in material paradoxes. It animates Hyunsoo Lee’s quest to investigate the nature of images as a fleeting presence of memory, articulating an intermediate space between life and death. By means of this presence, more often ghostly and spectral, the artist is not only intervening time in order to slow or bypass death, but asking whether the experience of mortality, to which he turns to for the first time, is private or public, a solitary passing or a movement within a community? What role does personal extinction play in the community of memory?
In his own death portrait –a tradition in Korea, “Lotto Lotto (Farewell)” (2015), the artist covers his own portrait in gold leaf, then scratches it off to reveal the image, as if latently coming from another world, or being discovered in a distant future, or out of a fundamental break in the symmetry between past and future. With uncanny playfulness, Hyunsoo Lee imbues the lottery ticket with the meaning it acquired for Korean immigrants in the United States and the promise of immediate wealth. The American dream unfolds as an ambivalent sequence of collective but unfulfilled desires. Similarly, the question of the American dream is explored through the neon work “Serenity” (2015), where the artist translates his human touch into a commercial inscription. Neon lights are associated in consumerist cultures as a dramatic form of advertisement – their mesmerizing glow beckons an audience to interact with its message. For Hyunsoo Lee, torn between two cultures and identities, the neon lights represented a beacon and triggering memories of his first interaction with New York City at Times Square. The word flickers, in a pale blue, threatening to extinguish any second – a nod to the transience of our existence.
 Lotto Lotto (Farewell), 2015 Scratched gold leaf on aluminum print. 40x60 cm. |
 Serenity, 2015 Neon. 62x29 cm. Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani and the artist |
 Soom, 2015 Watercolor and gloss varnish on paper. 53x71 cm. Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani and the artist |
OPENING:
13 January 2016, 7.00 p.m. to 10.00 p.m.
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