JaeHyo Lee's SLANTED BENCH in CRAFTED: OBJECTS IN FLUX Featured at Cynthia-Reeves Gallery, Thru 1/10

CYNTHIA-REEVES is pleased to announce the inclusion of JaeHyo Lee's SLANTED BENCH in "CRAFTED: Objects in Flux", an international overview of thirty contemporary artists expanding the conversation and discipline of conceptual practices and techniques of craft making at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through January 10, 2016. The exhibition is the first of its kind within an encyclopedic museum to explore the broad possibilities of contemporary artistic engagement with craft. Curated by Emily Zilber, the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts, the exhibition opened on August 24 and aims to "demonstrate vitality, viability and variety inherent in choosing craft as a foundation for contemporary artistic practice," the curator writes in the exhibition's catalogue.

"The show focuses on contemporary craft-based artists who bridge cutting-edge concepts and traditional skills as they embrace and explore the increasingly blurred boundaries between art, craft, and design. Looking to a broad range of materials and practices, the exhibition explores the connections between craft and performance; the opportunities provided by new technologies and materials; and the power of rethinking craft's interactions with architecture and space." (Emily Zilber, CRAFTED: Objects in Flux catalogue, MFA, Boston.)

JaeHyo Lee has been rethinking and re-envisioning use of quotidian materials for several decades. Rather than dismantling each sculptural component and creating a hybrid aesthetic, Lee's works emphasize his materials' essential nature. The trajectory of his current work reveals his refined approach to nature - muse to his ideological and spatial concerns.

The artist observes: "Those who make a hard living may be the ones who make this world a beautiful place. I certainly do not have the power to create 'beauty'. I just hope to reveal the beauty in what is usually seen but not noticed. If one looks closely, one sees how beautiful simple elements can be."

"Often minimalistic, Lee's typically monumental work centers around circular motifs, a re-envisioning of materials, and organic shapes, duly highlighted in the exhibited SLANTED BENCH. With varied logs crosscut and planned to expose oval patterns, which emerge as elongated mirror images reminiscent of dividing cells, viewers are asked to look into the work, beyond the physical surface, to discover that pattern can also serve as a structure." (Emily Zilber, CRAFTED: Objects in Flux catalogue, MFA Boston)

JaeHyo Lee, installation, Venice, Italy, Summer 2015

As noted in the artist's breakout catalog, RETURN TO NATURE, "JaeHyo Lee's early works share the critical mind of land artists who befriend nature and follow the flow of nature. And its true meaning can only be achieved when reverence for nature appears. Even if Lee's works consumed a tremendous amount of time and labor, the first thing that springs to mind from his works is nature.

"Nature seems chaotic and violent depending on how it is viewed, but Lee finds the source of autogeny in a sphere. A circle is a figure closely and symbolically related to co-existence, integrity and the found of all beings. When this circle is materialized into a body, it becomes a sphere. Therefore, the symbolic representation that a grain of all livings originating from this basic rounded body is the starting point of spheres which continue to appear in his works." (Choi, Taeman, Art Critic, 2008)

JaeHyo Lee graduated from Hong-Ik University in 1992, and is the prize winner of the Hankook Ilbo Young Artists Award in 1997; the Osaka Triennial Award in 1998; the Kim Sae-Jung Award in 2000; the Sculpture in Woodland Award in 2002; and the Japan Hyogo International Competition Award in 2004. His work is included in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Hyogo Prefecture Museum of Art Japan; Metropolitan Art Museum, South Korea; Busan and the Osaka Contemporary Art Center, Japan. Most recently, his work was included in the Museum of Art and Design's inauguration exhibition, Second Lives, and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, AL. In 2013, the artist debuted his first US public art installation in New York City, Lotus, a 20-foot wood tower installed in. Union Square - a collaborative exhibition by CYNTHIA-REEVES Projects and the New York City Parks Department.

CYNTHIA-REEVES represents an international roster of established artists who share a process-apparent sensibility in their art. We are committed to artwork that demonstrates an authentic voice, an innovative use of materials and an appreciation of the mark in diverse media: site-based installation, video, sculpture, painting and works on paper. A sub-text to the gallery's program is artwork that provokes a discourse around the convergence of art and science, as well as our relationship to the natural world - a discourse essential to the examination of contemporary art and culture within the context of these broader challenges.

In addition to its exhibition platform, the gallery is a resource for site-based installations and commissioned artworks in diverse media for both the public and private domain. For more information on the program and artists represented worldwide, please call 212.714.0044 or visit the online gallery at cynthia-reeeves.com.

Jaehyo Lee, 115012, (2015), stainless steel bolts, nails & wood, 24 x 39.5 x 4 inches (60.96 x 100.33 x 10 cm)

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