John Hurrell – 29 July, 2022

In this modest show of one video and four digitally constructed photographs we see Jae Hoon Lee‘s interest in coloured landscapes, usually through aerial vistas that have their compositions digitally elaborated—often through chosen sections being repeated.

Using a drone, three of the static works are of landforms within large expanses of water, taken from directly above. The fourth is a three-quarter angle view of a sunset on the sea’s distant horizon. (It seems to reference Altdorfer’s 1529 Battle of Alexander at Issus.) Rich in intricate detail, they provide a lot of pleasure through close scrutiny.

Lee’s Sunset in Murawai has a piecing sun about to drop out of sight, while a lone rock in the middle of the ocean looks like McCahon‘s Moby Dick is sighted off Murawai Beach. The layers of oncoming green waves look translucent like a shallow stack of glassy pancakes. A field of pin-dotted sheep is detectable in the dark hills at the bottom on the right, close to the beach.

Island Farm fascinates with its hyperreal intricate detail and organic perimeter: the mottled murky sea enveloping the island, the multiple elegantly shaped treetops, the dark roads and fine-lined carparks and fences, rock formations, pinpricked sheep, beached dinghies and extending jetties. The island’s shape in isolation from the sea, connects with the play with solid shape in Dark Matter, the video.

Orewa in contrast is like a painting with a dominant flat picture plane, the horizontal beach edge and foaming dappled waves parallel to the rectangle’s bottom border, above which sit a three-deep row of blocklike houses, yellow-green lawns and road. The subtly streaked sea is a pellucid field, a limpid oblong on the wall, hovering in front of the standing viewer.

Virginia Lake shows an orange roofed home on a tree-packed peninsula surrounded by silky green-grey water. It revels in the fine detail of different arboreal formations and foliage hue. Different clustering groups of botanical distinctions ensure the pronounced difference between high altitude (leaf cover) and ground level (trunk level) experiences.

In Dark Matter, a video that is absolutely mesmerising, there is an interest in ‘geological’ mineral compression, a sense of contracting, finely patterned linear undulations, and forceful internal jamming. The artist’s violently squeezed glittering textures and stressed icy crystalline formations are made from knitted together, jumbled, juxtaposed parts of foaming waves.

These turning morphing sequences of layered aqua configurations, that change from turquoise and azure to deep dark purple, are pinioned to the centre of the rectangular screen like a wonky kaleidoscope—only to suddenly explode and fill the screen like a rippling carpet of falling leaves, then to eventually tighten, reform, and continue the loop.

This is a marvellous show if you enjoy digital wizardry, surprising retinal sensations, and subtle treatments of New Zealand land and water scapes: initiated from the air. Absolutely intriguing!

John Hurrell

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