Lehmann Maupin Seoul presents Recombinant, a dual exhibition of new work by Mandy El-Sayegh and Seoul-based artist Keunmin Lee. The exhibition takes its title from recombinant DNA, a phenomenon in genetics in which pieces of genetic information from separate genes, cells, or organisms are exchanged to create new forms. The show is the result of a process of collaboration and exchange between the two artists, who met several years ago after El-Sayegh discovered Lee’s work through a search-engine algorithm that suggested its similarity to her own. The pair began a correspondence—largely through sharing images, since they do not speak a common language—discovering aesthetic connections and intersecting artistic impulses within their practices. Recombinant brings together works which, in different ways, use imagery of the body (often in abstracted forms) to connect to wider themes, particularly around how individual subjects struggle to find modes of self-representation within societal structures.
Lee’s large-scale paintings are notable for their use of biomorphic forms: painterly abstractions that suggest organs, flesh, limbs, or circulatory systems, rendered in such close proximity as to become overwhelming and inscrutable. Often appearing as fragmented parts of the human body, his subjects are depictions of what he recalls from hallucinations during his hospitalization. Lee’s paintings attempt to give form to some parts of these memories; the body is visualized in a manner stripped of any social context, and the individual becomes simply the bodily—flesh, muscle, and blood vessels. Frequent use of red hues also adds to the abstract quality of Lee’s painting, rather than a sharp, explicit exposure of visceral imagery. This is an intentional choice made by the artist, and is aimed at “refining” the image of each hallucination.
On the first floor of the gallery, Lee’s monumentally-scaled triptych is paired alongside works from El-Sayegh from new and ongoing series, all of which employ a palette of blood-like smears, flesh-tones, and pastel blues, evoking sunset skies, or bruised skin. Screen-printed words on El-Sayegh’s paintings form “concrete poems” and are taken from code-names of military operations, fragments of advertisements, and newspapers. The artist has long collected words and phrases, and she is drawn to the ambiguous readings they produce as well as the connections they draw across the wider socio-political world.
The upper gallery also brings together large-scale paintings by El-Sayegh and Lee, although the works on this level are more muted than those on the floor below. Although they share a softer, pastel-toned palette, these paintings simultaneously possess the corporeal qualities of the works seen elsewhere, and, as El-Sayegh explains, “hinge on the body in a very tangible way.” The connection to the body as well as institutional contexts is integral to both artists’ practices—while El-Sayegh is known for creating installations and other works that explore the conditions of institutions such as hospitals or prisons as they relate to the individual, Lee’s work is profoundly influenced by his own experiences of being hospitalized, and he is critical of the societal norms and systems that pathologize and seek to eliminate difference:
“Interaction with mental health is important in art and still dominates most of the creative process. I have no obligation to progress and illuminate this topic in Korea. Still, if I focus on expressing alienation or even something unsophisticated, sick, or ugly through my work, interest in this kind of outsider art will increase. I believe positive outcomes will occur when artists are recognised as valuable beyond their pathological personal history.”
– Keunmin Lee, May 12, 2022
A new sound piece by Mandy El-Sayegh, En masse (collective body) (2022) can be heard throughout the exhibition. Created by El-Sayegh with her collaborator, composer Lily Oakes, the work features sound samples from hospitals and other institutions, such as the buzzing of electric lighting, as well as El-Sayegh’s muffled voice reading symptoms she experiences including tinnitus, linking to themes found in works by both artists in the exhibition. In the lead up to the show, El-Sayegh added an additional element, relating to the tragedy which occurred in Seoul’s Itaewon district during the period, in which over 150 people died and many more were injured in a crowd surge. In the piece, El-Sayegh’s voice reads a set of instructions which circulated online in the aftermath, as to how to move to avoid being asphyxiated in similar circumstances. The work reflects the experience of attempting to understand such a shocking and tragic event, and links to concerns seen in works by both El-Sayegh and Lee in the exhibition. Both artists are engaged with the position of the individual in relation to a mass of people, on the level of the individual body (which, in the imaginary of Lee’s painting, can become blurred into an undifferentiated, biological mass), and in terms of existing within society.
All of El-Sayegh’s works in Recombinant come from her currently ongoing series, as well as from a new body of work titled Editorial Alias. Several paintings in Editorial Alias contain the screen-printed letters GØUCC in lettering that deliberately mirrors the Gucci logo. In a poetic doubling, GØUCC is also the artist’s father’s “call-sign”—the personal identifier he uses in his amateur radio practice. A Palestinian calligrapher, El-Sayegh’s father belongs to a history that is methodically erased while his writing is commodified for cultural value. After moving to the United Kingdom, he never felt safe using his surname, and often employed different aliases. In this series, El-Sayegh plays with the notions of cultural histories, personal identity, and the language of commodity—in borrowing a signifier of luxury brand, association “bootlegging” becomes a means to steal power. The image of a radio call-sign—a signal sent out to make oneself known—connects these paintings to concerns seen throughout Lee’s work, and both artists ask how marginalized individuals can represent themselves in the face of an institutional architecture which seeks to erase them.