Lee Jeonglok South Korean, b. 1971

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Biography

Lee Jeonglok is a Korean artist who works with photography to make beautiful images of mystical events in elemental landscapes. An expert in the manipulation of his medium, he uses sophisticated time-lapse techniques and long exposures to stage dramatic and haunting interventions. In these new pieces this action takes place in the wild and sublime topography of Iceland.

In these large-scale photographs of waterfalls, rivers, islands and rugged mountains Jeonglok introduces clouds and clusters of neon-coloured butterflies. They hover and swarm to form balls and pathways over and across the terrain, suffused with a celestial light, contrasting the muted gloaming of the natural environment. They have a ghostly and ethereal presence, which is at odds with the tangible materiality of their context, with its evocation of icy water, extremes of temperature and unyielding rock and scree.

 

The construction of these images is a painstaking process. Jeonglok spends days in the landscape, setting up his scenarios. The pictures are composites, made from multiple exposures, which require great precision and patience: each butterfly is individually photographed and flash lit, the time of day must be right. These are, most emphatically, not 'photo-shopped' images, but share a commonality with the early, pioneering days of landscape photography. Like his forebears this artist lives, and is immersed, in the physical particularities of his hard-won subject and the technical challenges of making it seen.

 

Jeonglok calls up a spirit world, one that exists in parallel to the physical certainties of place and time. His delicate, precarious and short-lived butterflies flutter across the corporeal plain, coalesce for a while and move on. They are a metaphor and give us a perspective on our fleeting time span and preoccupations, relative to these epic spaces carved out over millennia, indifferent to, and unaware of, our existence.

 

 

View available works on Artsy
Works
  • Tree of Life on the Water
    Tree of Life on the Water, 2020
    Single-channel Video, 7m 50s
    32" Display Screen
    Unframed - 40 x 70 cm (15.75 x 27.5 in)
    Framed - 46 x 76 cm (18.1 x 29.9 in)
  • Tree of Life on the Water
    Tree of Life on the Water, 2020
    Single-channel Video, 7m 50s
    55" Display Screen
    Unframed - 67 x 120 cm (26.4 x 47.3 in)
    Framed - 75 x 128 cm (29.5 x 50.4 in)
  • Iceland 01
    Iceland 01, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Iceland 02
    Iceland 02, 2019
    C-Type Print
    152 x 120 cm
    59.8 x 47.2 in
  • Iceland 03-2
    Iceland 03-2, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Iceland 03-3
    Iceland 03-3, 2019
    C-Type Print
    90 x 120 cm
    35.4 x 47.2 in
  • Iceland 06
    Iceland 06, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 95 cm
    47.2 x 37.4 in
  • Iceland 07
    Iceland 07, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 95 cm
    47.2 x 37.4 in
  • Iceland 08
    Iceland 08, 2019
    C-Type Print
    90 x 120 cm
    35.4 x 47.2 in
  • Iceland 11
    Iceland 11, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Iceland 21
    Iceland 21, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Iceland 22
    Iceland 22, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Iceland 24
    Iceland 24, 2019
    C-Type Print
    90 x 120 cm
    35.4 x 47.2 in
  • Iceland 26
    Iceland 26, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Iceland 29
    Iceland 29, 2019
    C-Type Print
    90 x 120 cm
    35.4 x 47.2 in
  • Iceland 30
    Iceland 30, 2019
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47.2 x 63 in
  • Tree of Life 6-1 (ed 1/7)
    Tree of Life 6-1 (ed 1/7), 2017
    C-Type Print
    152 x 120 cm
    60 x 47 in
  • Nabi 10 (ed 1/7)
    Nabi 10 (ed 1/7), 2015
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47 x 63 in
  • Nabi 26 (ed 1/5)
    Nabi 26 (ed 1/5), 2015
    C-Type Print
    110 x 220 cm
    43.31 x 86.61 in
  • Nabi 104 (ed 1/7)
    Nabi 104 (ed 1/7), 2014
    C-Type Print
    120 x 160 cm
    47 x 63 in
  • Tree of Life in Island 5-1-4 (ed 1/10)
    Tree of Life in Island 5-1-4 (ed 1/10), 2013
    C-type Print
    90 x 120 cm
    35.5 x 47 in
  • Tree of Life in Island 5-4-10 (ed 1/10)
    Tree of Life in Island 5-4-10 (ed 1/10), 2013
    C-Type Print
    120 x 95 cm
    47 x 37.5 in
  • Tree of Life in Island 5-4-8 (ed 4/7)
    Tree of Life in Island 5-4-8 (ed 4/7), 2013
    C-Type Print
    152 x 120 cm
    59.5 x 47 in
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