Untitled

By Jaye Rhee
In the Video Lounge
Friday, February 6th - Sunday, March 1st, 2009

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

My video performance work explores the evasive nature of authentic desire. I focus on the tension between "real" desire and "fake" objects of desire, as embodied by images, presenting "real fakes" and "imageless images."

For example, in my recent series, Swan, Polar Bear, Niagara, performers move in public baths against a background of wall paintings depicting swans in a lake, a North Pole scene with polar bears, and the Niagara Falls. These scenes exist in words, as well as in collective memory shaped by culture. But where do they actually exist? The swan, the polar bears of the North Pole, and the Niagara Falls, all exist without existing: they are idealized images of the nostalgic imagination.

I thus present “real fakes” through video performances that forthrightly foreground artifice. By acknowledging the “fake” substance of the materials used, the artwork actually reveals the authentic nature of these imaginary worlds. The product is a “real fake” that, notwithstanding its artifice, is authentic and thus genuine.

Ultimately, my goal is to create a new visual space in which artifice evaporates through the candid presentation of images as naked materials. This "honest artifice" would ultimately lead one into an experience of reflection about one's own nostalgia.

Jaye Rhee revels in the space between the ironic and the poignant. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, Rhee studied at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, MFA). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Kobe Bienniale 2007 (Japan), with solo exhibitions at Galerie Gana Beaubourg (Paris), Chicago Cultural Center, and the Gallery Factory (Seoul). Her work has also been featured in Carol Becker’s essay, published in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art by The University of California Press, and reviewed by the New York Times, Art Asia Pacific Magazine, and Art in Culture.