HYE RIM LEE
ART EDITION 2010
Hye Rim Lee is widely known for her provocative and critically engaging multi-media work that challenges definitions of femininity and engages female sexuality by exploring image culture and animation.
Her highly provocative imagery is focused primarily on digitally animated objects and characters created by the artist. These include naked men and women and a myriad of sex toys. In her compositions these taboo subjects are used to challenge the viewer’s own fantasies. Hye Rim Lee’s most popular subject is a computer-generated character named TOKI. The artist uses TOKI to explore popular culture in relation to notions of femininity and sexuality.
Readily identifiable by her beautiful face and voluptuous and highly sexualized body, TOKI epitomizes the stereotypical female character typically found in Manga and computer games in contemporary pop culture. Through TOKI, the artist reveals and challenges conventional notions about female beauty and power by turning the gaze back towards the explicitly male sexual fantasies that dominate the world of role-playing and 3D avatars.
Born in Seoul, Korea, Hye Rim Lee received her bachelor’s degree of Music (voice) at Ewha Women’s University. In 1993, she immigrated to New Zealand, where she majored in Intermedia at Elam School of Fine Arts in the University of Auckland. Since then, Lee has lived and worked in Auckland, New Zealand and New York City.
Lee has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including Max Lang Gallery in New York (2009), GACMA Gallery in Malaga, Spain (2009), International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale (2009), and Glasstress of the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009).
For Art Edition 2010 in Busan, Kukje Gallery is presenting work from all of Lee’s major projects. The exhibition comprises of three parts: in the “Candyland” series, Lee illustrates the sexual body parts of a female wearing a bunny mask; in “Crystal City” she depicts fantasies of highly sexualized characters in an imaginary city filled with phallic symbols and sex toys; and, finally, in her video work titled “Crystal City Spun”, Lee presents an animation of the Crystal City
