2023 ACC CONTEXT Walking, Wandering

Changwoon Lee

〈Phenomenon Map〉, 2023.

Stainless steel, steel ball, belt conveyor, wire, 1000×940×600cm.
Commissioned by Asia Culture Center. Courtesy of the artist.

In this exhibition, Changwoon Lee presents metaphorical works of movements that take place in the city. Phenomenon Map is a massive structure in the middle of the exhibition space, composed of rails that extend above all the way to the ceiling, and balls that traverse on the rail. Phenomenon Map, one of the series of works that interpret social structures through space installations, visualizes roads that connect different places that compose a city, and portrays images of “movement” or the subject of the exhibition. Meanwhile, the work symbolically constructs the city as a single system. The balls, which move with stability throughout a structure systematically designed based on calculation of dynamics, reminds the visitor of labor, leisure, and life as an urbanite which operates according to the order enforced by the social system of a city. Then does that mean that the everyday life of an urban being, designed through control and order, inevitably dominated by the banality? Or is it at stake and charged with anxiety of being popped out of the given route at any time? Nonetheless, the artist sheds light on the paradox that “rhythm” definitely lies in this movement. He reminds us that there is not one journey that is the same as another, even if the path is the same, and that it just may be one’s own fate to discover one’s own distinct rhythm.