Stranger in Strange Land,  Jae Hoon Lee

Stranger in Strange Land, Jae Hoon Lee

Dunedin Public Art Gallery | Until 21 February 2016

Stranger in Stranger Land currently on display at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, is an atmospheric, moody installation by Korean artist Jae Hoon Lee. Lee (born in 1973) is a self-proclaimed “cultural wanderer”. His work features “observations” of Arab and Thai culture and landscapes ranging from icy mountain tops wrapped in clouds to waterfalls in New Zealand. Lee has lived all over the world and typically documents or presents cultures and landscapes from other countries; for him, it is about obtaining experiences. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998, a Masters in Fine Arts in 2001 and a doctorate at the University of Auckland in 2012.

Lee’s exhibition is dreamlike: looped videos of clouds fold over mountains and waterfalls, and wind skims icy waters, creating a sense of calm and certainty. The works span from ceiling to ground. The images dimly light the room, contributing to the exhibition’s mystique. Lee often records landscapes and scenery that (he assumes) have otherwise been unseen and untouched by humans, glorifying the diversity of nature. The viewer is a guest.

When I first viewed these changing landscapes, I assumed they were real, but on further inspection there is something artificial about them; they distort reality. The images are composed of pictures taken from opposite sides of the world in Switzerland and New Zealand. While travelling, one is a stranger in a strange land — the surroundings are foreign and distort what the traveller understands as natural. Lee’s work reflects this phenomenon.

The projections’ large scale contributes a sense of majesty to the exhibition, which overflows into the smaller works. One of these works features several screens positioned in a row on the ground. They are connected by a looped video of train tracks, signifying movement and travel. It is intrusive and distorting as the sound of the train echoes through the dimly lit room but also contributes to the defamiliarising mood created by each work.

A common element in Lee’s work is a contrasting sense of juxtaposition and inclusion. Mounted on a wall opposite the train-track videos are two more screens. One plays a recording of an Indonesian man cooking food over a portable barbeque next to a busy road, the other plays a recording of Arabic programmes on the TV of a hotel room.

These videos juxtapose two geographically and culturally different scenes, but they are inclusive too. In both, the camera is stationary throughout the recording, positioning the viewer as an observer. But in Indonesia the viewer is positioned behind the cook as motorbikes buzz past, while in the hotel room the viewer is positioned on the foot of a bed. Both the Indonesian street view and hotel room are simultaneously foreign to me but also recognisable and familiar.. 

Lee’s work makes the natural mysterious, making the experience of Stranger in Strange Land more special. It is like travelling while staying in Dunedin. Head down to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and check out this dreamy work that blurs reality with fiction.   

This article first appeared in Issue 26, 2015.
Posted 2:52pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Ruby Heyward.