Mire Lee’s sculptural installations are often unsightly and heavily material, most often reminiscent of intestines or dissected body parts that exude liquids that allude to bodily fluids. Despite the feelings of repulsion, her works come to life with movements that attract viewers instantly engaged by the mechanical and visceral lexicon: cascades of offal combine with kinetic devices composed of industrial materials such as silicone tubes, chains, concrete, and steel structures contrasted with the consistency of glycerin splashes, sticky liquids, natural clay, and the audiovisual languages of video. In its entirety, the artist’s compositions create atypical entities and dysfunctional organisms that move away from the canons of objective beauty.
Detached from all kinds of social media, the contemporary artist prefers anonymity: she lives and works between Amsterdam and South Korea and has a degree in sculpture and media art from the National University College of Fine Arts. Her creations have been exhibited in major institutions: the Art Sonje Center in Seoul, Lily Roberts in Paris, the Art Institute in Utrecht, and last year she was included in the Future Generation Art Prize list.
Lee’s latest exhibition of her work “H.R. Giger & Mire Lee” at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin is a dialogue between Lee’s apparatus and the xenomorphic creatures of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, such as the renowned “Necronom IV,” the erotic diaries and sketches that inspired the creatures in Ridley Scott’s Alien. Sexuality, corporeality, and technology coexist permanently in the macro area that analyzes the relationship between human beings and technology at the Biennale. Her work at the exhibition is a set of cells animated by the excited gestures of a machine that recalls the digestive system of an animal.
– Simone Vertua
