battleground

haevan lee

7 september 2024 - 5 oktober 2024

On Saturday, September 7, Bradwolff Projects in Amsterdam East opens the solo exhibition “Battleground” by Haevan Lee. This exhibition explores the psychological landscape of war through a powerful mix of geometric forms and abstract sculptures. Bradwolff Projects will be open from 1:00 PM on September 7, with the official opening from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

Haevan Lee’s work transforms the space of Bradwolff Projects into a dynamic landscape that reflects the realities of conflict. Her paintings and installations reveal hidden landscapes and explore the complexity of geopolitical boundaries. Lee says: “For me, art is an attitude toward life. Art connects the visible with the invisible world, the known with the unknown, with my third eye—my vision and imagination.”

Lee’s artistic practice encompasses paintings, installations, drawings, and videos. She explores landscapes and boundaries, from the Korean DMZ to the border between North Korea and China, and more broadly to other cultures and continents. Her work investigates not only geopolitical boundaries but also cultural, racial, and archaeological boundaries, highlighting how creativity and environment are interconnected in an ever-changing landscape.

Haevan Lee (b. 1990, Republic of Korea) was born in Dongsong-eup, Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do, near the Korean border and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in South Korea. She lives and works in The Hague and Seoul. Lee holds an MA in Artistic Research from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and a BFA in Oriental Painting from Sungkyunkwan University. She actively participates in international exhibitions, including the Pyeongchang Biennial and the Bangkok Art Biennial, building bridges between different cultures and perspectives.

Essay by Jinju Kim

Below this press release, you will find an essay written by Jinju Kim about the exhibition “Battleground”. The essay offers a more in-depth analysis and context for the work of Haevan Lee.

War, though often invisible, surrounds us at every moment. “Battleground” invites us to explore the connection between war and present life. This is done by harnessing the power of painting, believing in the dynamics of space, perceiving beauty, and understanding distress.

Under the title “Battleground,” the exhibition explores the somber implications of battlefields. Instead of depicting typical war elements, the exhibition utilizes large paintings featuring rounded forms, rough porcelain, and draped fabrics. These elements are visually distorted, exaggerated, and embellished, capturing the atmosphere of military conflicts and abstract boundary concepts rather than representing specific battlefields. The exhibition evokes breathtaking natural landscapes, comparable to a buffer zone—an area established through agreements between belligerent parties following intense conflict. In such a buffer zone, neutrality is safeguarded without violence, conflicts are reduced, and security is guaranteed. Artificial structures are often removed, allowing nature to flourish freely. This area is characterized by potential conflict, featuring blossoming flora, rose-like smoke, and rolling demilitarization. The beauty of the landscapes shaped by nature, combined with the latent distress, highlights the unique affectivity of a buffer zone.

Haevan Lee’s story is rooted in her personal experiences in a border region. She grew up near the DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone), a product of the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, and later traveled to witness militarized borders in various countries. Generally, even small movements are not permitted in these restricted areas if deemed dangerous to either side. Such places reminded her of the barbed wire fences, the watchtowers, and the footprints that stopped just before the minefields, and made her think of the animals and plants that populated the area where the traces of human activity had disappeared. She saw the destruction of humanity’s livelihoods by war on live broadcasts, just as she had heard from her relatives whose way of life had changed after a devastating fire in the border region. All these experiences felt real to her. Although she did not experience them herself, the repeated scenarios of conflict have built up in her memory and translated into overlapping images—some similar, some different. Her paintings and the exhibition space combine the warmth of mountain peaks and rolling waves with the somber sky above explosion sites, evoking thoughts about the profound impact of war on us, nature, and the border region.

The exhibition “Battleground” will be held in Amsterdam in September 2024 and in Seoul in October 2024. The same works are presented in separate contexts with a one-month interval between them. The artist’s exhibition is presented within the dome architecture of Bradwolff Projects in Amsterdam and is set up in the two-story galleries of the Insa Art Center in Seoul. Located in the northwest of Seoul and the southeast of Amsterdam, these two distant places share a seven-hour time difference. They cannot meet in terms of time and space; they merely overlap what is to come and repeat what has passed. In this field, where things moving in different directions converge, we approach the point where peacefulness and confusion battle to emerge.

Jinju Kim is a Seoul-based curator and writer specializing in contemporary art. Her research focuses on the changing foundations of art in relation to shifts in socio-economic and material culture. She has curated exhibitions such as “Lily” (WESS, 2022) and “Tips and Tricks: What World Would Your Eyes See Today?” (Kimsechoong Museum, 2020).