Yoonjae Lee, Hovering Duration, at Caption Seoul, Seoul

“Hovering Duration” by Yoonjae Lee, curated by Hyein Kim, at Caption Seoul, Seoul, 26/7/2024 – 15/8/2024.

Yoonjae Lee explores the act of ‘seeing’, which is the basis of visual art. In particular, she has focused on the cornea of the eye, visualizing that each person sees optically differently. Her research, based on the attitude of accepting people’s various eye conditions, is expanding to the question of what attitude visual art takes toward the diverse eye conditions of viewers. As an extension of her research, Hovering Duration is an attempt to create results as diverse as the different eye states of the viewers by changing ‘seeing’ in visual art to an optional act. On the other hand, this attempt is imbued with the sense of helplessness that she felt for a while regarding seeing a specific object as a piece of art and producing a physical artwork. The state of helplessness led her to throw seemingly obvious and meaningless questions like “Why does visual art always have to be like that?”. And she translates those questions into the space with a serious attitude rather than taking them as useless. The artist tells Hovering Duration is like an event that reveals what visual art is made of. And she keeps asking questions. What is hovering in this space? The concept referred to as an art exhibition? or phenomena regarded as pieces of art? or the existence of viewers?