01

‚if you have seen this woman or have any information about her whereabouts, contact any police station or charles goddard, head of wokingham station, telephone – 11 wokingham.‘

ten days after her disappearance, agatha christie is found hiding in a hotel in harrogate. the spectacular search for the world-famous author ends without sensation and will never be commented on again by the grande dame of the crime novel. the reasons for her actions and the resulting covering of her tracks can be deduced from a sideways leap by her husband at the time, but the lifelong silence about it, especially from the point of view of a master storyteller who founded this genre, is not at all explained by this.

02

jeewi lee’s deep interest in traces and the elaboration of their legibility began during her studies, when she documented the six years she spent in robert lucander’s class at the berlin udk with large-format cutouts of her studio floor. the artist juxtaposes the three pillars of the queen of crime christie’s success – the mystery of the perpetrator, the plot and the game of revelation – with a finely conceived and artistically minimized question and answer scenario. she depicts the living space of her grandfather, who was unknown to her personally, by removing the wallpaper that had been used for decades from the walls there in order to rebuild it true to scale in a berlin gallery. what can be interpreted on the one hand as an immersion in the history of her korean ancestor is, through the continental transfer, at the same time a mirror image of everyday museum life in dealing with distant, foreign cultural assets.

03

‚one small step for a man…‘ not only symbolizes the first moon landing and the traces left behind on its surface, including the flag and other vehicle parts left behind. the literarily valuable phrase itself is a contemporary historical symbol and an indication of the deeper motivation behind such a huge undertaking. when jeewi lee traces the history of the korean separation along the 38th parallel by removing the surfaces of bark from before 1945 fully mature trees on paper, she puts a question mark behind this historical demarcation by confronting us with a witness of the time before this intervention.

04

compared to the assemblages of daniel spoerrie, which also testify to time and moment, but are more like thigh-slapping, it can be seen how much more quietly and thoughtfully lee’s cosmos revolves around the idea of showing and naming. if you lay a felt carpet across a main road in berlin, you will certainly find traces of driving and crossing on it, but what exactly are we being told? lee calmly plays off the loose threads of urgency and relevance against each other. while some of her works generate a direct reference and a larger narrative, others remain as self-referential, hermetic evidence of lived presence. the example of the 4 x 18 meter carpet documentation shows us how the artist not only forensically secures traces, but also consciously creates them. an installation she has staged in a gallery also illustrates this game. two neatly separated fields of white and black stones are slowly mixed into one another by the public entering them.

05

calmness and patience are essential prerequisites that enable david attenborough to capture his breathtaking depictions of our planet on a film camera. if he can demonstrate how new life grows from the ashes after a devastating forest fire, the parallel to lee’s work is quickly drawn. from the ashes, taken after a forest fire between pisa and florence, the artist forms sculptural soaps, which she combines into large-format installations. here, too, memory and remembrance poke through the work, not as an admonishing finger – rather meaning attention in itself, than praising the grandiose attitude of promising solutions. the self-contained certainty of a constant movement, no matter how slow, an eternally driving, invisible impulse, hovers over jeewi lee’s work like a delicate mist.

martin eugen raabenstein, 2023

more at jeewi.de

jeewi lee

01

‚if you have seen this woman or have any information about her whereabouts, contact any police station or charles goddard, head of wokingham station, telephone – 11 wokingham.‘

ten days after her disappearance, agatha christie is found hiding in a hotel in harrogate. the spectacular search for the world-famous author ends without sensation and will never be commented on again by the grande dame of the crime novel. the reasons for her actions and the resulting covering of her tracks can be deduced from a sideways leap by her husband at the time, but the lifelong silence about it, especially from the point of view of a master storyteller who founded this genre, is not at all explained by this.

02

jeewi lee’s deep interest in traces and the elaboration of their legibility began during her studies, when she documented the six years she spent in robert lucander’s class at the berlin udk with large-format cutouts of her studio floor. the artist juxtaposes the three pillars of the queen of crime christie’s success – the mystery of the perpetrator, the plot and the game of revelation – with a finely conceived and artistically minimized question and answer scenario. she depicts the living space of her grandfather, who was unknown to her personally, by removing the wallpaper that had been used for decades from the walls there in order to rebuild it true to scale in a berlin gallery. what can be interpreted on the one hand as an immersion in the history of her korean ancestor is, through the continental transfer, at the same time a mirror image of everyday museum life in dealing with distant, foreign cultural assets.

03

‚one small step for a man…‘ not only symbolizes the first moon landing and the traces left behind on its surface, including the flag and other vehicle parts left behind. the literarily valuable phrase itself is a contemporary historical symbol and an indication of the deeper motivation behind such a huge undertaking. when jeewi lee traces the history of the korean separation along the 38th parallel by removing the surfaces of bark from before 1945 fully mature trees on paper, she puts a question mark behind this historical demarcation by confronting us with a witness of the time before this intervention.

04

compared to the assemblages of daniel spoerrie, which also testify to time and moment, but are more like thigh-slapping, it can be seen how much more quietly and thoughtfully lee’s cosmos revolves around the idea of showing and naming. if you lay a felt carpet across a main road in berlin, you will certainly find traces of driving and crossing on it, but what exactly are we being told? lee calmly plays off the loose threads of urgency and relevance against each other. while some of her works generate a direct reference and a larger narrative, others remain as self-referential, hermetic evidence of lived presence. the example of the 4 x 18 meter carpet documentation shows us how the artist not only forensically secures traces, but also consciously creates them. an installation she has staged in a gallery also illustrates this game. two neatly separated fields of white and black stones are slowly mixed into one another by the public entering them.

05

calmness and patience are essential prerequisites that enable david attenborough to capture his breathtaking depictions of our planet on a film camera. if he can demonstrate how new life grows from the ashes after a devastating forest fire, the parallel to lee’s work is quickly drawn. from the ashes, taken after a forest fire between pisa and florence, the artist forms sculptural soaps, which she combines into large-format installations. here, too, memory and remembrance poke through the work, not as an admonishing finger – rather meaning attention in itself, than praising the grandiose attitude of promising solutions. the self-contained certainty of a constant movement, no matter how slow, an eternally driving, invisible impulse, hovers over jeewi lee’s work like a delicate mist.

martin eugen raabenstein, 2023

more at jeewi.de