Q1
Hello, artist Lee Eun. Your work, as well as the way you present it, seems to offer something new each time.
For example, your works based on “animated GIFs,” which translate movement into painting, were presented within an elegant residential setting in House of Taste at D Museum in 2024. In I Want to Put Wheels on the Canvas at Audio Visual Pavilion in 2025, you added the axis of movement to characters.
In this exhibition, Silly Symphony, it was impressive to see your practice expand into a long, unfolded presentation of a single animation. While you are still dealing with the same idea of the “moving image,” I am curious what you feel has changed most significantly in this body of work compared to your previous works.
A1
It is nice to meet you, Kkophin Sohn. The biggest starting point for Silly Symphony was actually a financial limitation. Recently, I went through a major personal event and found myself in a situation where I had to prepare for a solo exhibition without being able to buy canvas stretchers. When I thought about the assets available to me, the first thing that came to mind was simply to paint directly onto fabric.
Without knowing that it would become this vast in length, I began this work with an attitude of “doing what I can do right now.” I will explain more about what I painted in the next question, but I wanted the story that holds me here, in this present moment, to unfold endlessly. I wanted to paint a very long story, something that could not be contained within a single body.
In that sense, what differs from my previous works, which were completed as individual canvases, is perhaps a change in my attitude. Previously, I painted in a goal-oriented way, running toward the completion of a single work. This time, however, I kept painting while imagining an endless story. Painting while running forward without thinking about completion awakened different senses in me.
The time spent stepping three paces back to look at the painting, the physical effort of going back and forth between the rooftop and the corridor in order to see the work as a whole these were some of the major changes I experienced through this work. Working while physically sensing time and space, this project was not simply about completing a single painting. It also became about seeing the overall time and space, and allowing that to continue naturally into the exhibition space.
Q2
The first emotion one experiences upon entering the exhibition space is a cute and lively atmosphere, almost as if one has arrived at an amusement park. The Disney animation that served as the basis for this work functioned in its own time as a form of popular consolation or fantasy, but from today’s perspective, its optimism can feel strangely unfamiliar.
I am curious how you hoped images from 1930s animation would be read differently by contemporary audiences, and how you see the sensations that arise from that gap especially the sense of dissonance or melancholy that appears alongside cuteness.
A2
I am glad to hear that it felt like entering an amusement park. That means my intention worked. More precisely, I imagined a highly decorated space like the waiting line for an amusement park attraction. When we wait for something, we do so with a mix of excitement and anxiety, don’t we? I wanted viewers to feel that crossing of emotions.
The animation that served as the starting point is like that, too. I did not need a dramatic story or a grand narrative. Perhaps the naive story of good rewarding good and evil being punished was something I wanted to knead and handle, like a melody I wanted to hum again.
I enjoyed painting the strangely mismatched settings between the characters. The female tree finds the male tree annoying; the friends singing about the cuteness of the forest seem as if they are addicted to something, slightly missing a screw. Those kinds of details interested me. At first glance, they may end simply as cuteness, but I wanted viewers to also feel the chewy aftertaste that remains in the mouth, like gum whose sweet flavor slowly drains away as you keep chewing.
I often miss childhood, but I describe it as a kind of confusion wrapped in pretty packaging. I think that cuteness, dissonance, inexplicable emptiness, and melancholy are also emotions that we all carry and need to look at.
Q3
In this work, it was striking that rather than dividing the 7-minute-and-50-second animation into individual scenes, you unfolded it as a single flow through a roll painting nearly 30 meters long.
This method of transferring a moving image onto a long canvas through length felt almost closer to an act of transcription than to painting. I am curious about the sensations you experienced through this three-month process, and what this repetitive act means within your career.
A3
This may connect with my answer to the first question. Things that began without looking toward a definite end allowed me to hold and release new things.
I remember a comment I once received during a critique. Someone said, “I understand that you paint things that move… but shouldn’t you paint better?” That comment made me suffer for days actually, for years. What does it mean to paint well? Where and how should I keep refining the work?
But while making this work, something became naturally clear to me: “Ah! I am doing a coloring book.” When you watch a child coloring, even if the child is not necessarily running toward completion, they are fundamentally focused on filling in a certain area and choosing a certain color. Whether it is well drawn or poorly drawn comes afterward.
As I worked with that childlike attitude for three months, what remained in me was not anxiety, nor the pressure to show that I could paint better, but rather a clean state of mind. Simple feelings like, “It is fun to fill this part with this color!” Whether this realization will hold a particular meaning within my career is something time will tell, but for my own mind, it felt very right. It was almost as if I had worked through a form of psychotherapy by myself through painting.
Q4
This question also relates to the form of the work. The installation method, sound, and overall space seemed to create a single continuous flow. In particular, although this was the same venue where your previous solo exhibition TURN, SWITCH, JUMP! took place, this exhibition was designed in an entirely different way in terms of movement and experience.
What kinds of sensations or rhythms did you hope viewers would experience in this exhibition, and what did you consider important when composing the space?
A4
Since I had already held a solo exhibition in the same space in 2022, my strongest thought was that I wanted to use the space in a completely different way. When I had a continuous roll painting of around 30 to 40 meters, I considered various ways to use the space. Simply hanging it from the ceiling or attaching it to the wall felt too easy to me. In my previous solo exhibition, I Want to Put Wheels on the Canvas at Audio Visual Pavilion in 2025, I did not restrict the viewer’s movement. But I noticed that viewers did not move as freely as I had expected. So I thought: I need to make a maze for the audience.
I wanted viewers to enter the story I had painted and enjoy themselves inside it. I also wanted the shape of the maze to be curved rather than straight. I prefer curves and round, slightly silly aesthetics over straight lines or sharp forms.
I thought that in a curved maze, as viewers moved here and there and examined the story, certain parts could be seen up close, while others could be seen from farther away. In that way, I could create differences in visual distance and timing. That is how I came to imagine the structure in its current form, and after many practical discussions, the exhibition took shape as it is now.
I would like once again to express my gratitude to Hwang Gyu-jin, who was in charge of installation and made concrete an exhibition that had previously existed only in my imagination.
Q5
In this work, you are again directly dealing with assets that are protected by very strong copyright. In an environment where such images are increasingly strictly controlled, your work seems to stand on a kind of boundary.
In your artist’s note, you wrote that “the sensation of remembering and transforming images cannot be controlled.” I would like to hear how you perceived these restrictions or tensions while making the work, and why you continue to work within them. Or, more broadly, how you understand the meaning of image ownership, sharing, and appropriation.
A5
I absolutely agree with the idea that in contemporary society, copyright is essential for protecting the rights of creators. I am also aware that the various characters I paint are protected by copyright. At the same time, I am also aware that if I do not mass-produce and commercialize them, my own creation can also be protected as a secondary creation.
What I wanted to talk about in this exhibition may be something like Disney’s monopolistic copyright. There is a saying: if you are trapped on a deserted island, you will be rescued faster by drawing Mickey Mouse than by writing S.O.S. That is probably a comment on how strict Disney is about copyright.
I think a corporation can own a specific image, but it cannot own the sensation of remembering and humming that image again. I think of this exhibition as my own humming of low-resolution Disney animation from the 1930s. To put it a little more strongly, I could also attach the part of my artist’s note that quotes Lawrence Lessig’s book. Working on the boundary is always precarious and feels like an unknown exploration, but I believe it certainly opens up new paths. I also want to say that I agree we should all speak more actively and exchange opinions about the parts that everyone keeps quiet about and avoids revealing.
Q5-2
As you intended, many people who visited the exhibition commented that the background music heightened their sense of immersion. You created both the music playing in the exhibition space and the main poster through generative AI. I would also like to hear your perspective on AI in relation to your practice, or the standards by which you use it.
A5-2
The AI-generated poster and background music were things I needed. Using it where it was needed felt like a very natural flow to me. I approached it as a very easy assistant, or even a colleague.
Of course, I think my standards for using AI include entering a well-structured prompt, keeping a record of it, and not hiding the fact that AI was used.
To add a little more about the background music: after the installation was finished, we were doing the final check, and no matter how I thought about it, the exhibition space felt too quiet. Of course, painting exhibitions are usually quiet, but to me, that silence felt audible. With only one week left, the tool I could use was AI specifically SUNO.
After about twelve attempts, a piece of music came out that made me think, “This is it!” Sound artist Yoon Jae-min then adjusted it, and it became the version you hear now.
There is one detail that many viewers miss. The main sound plays throughout the exhibition space, but if you listen closely to the painting, there are two hidden spots where birdsong can be heard. Those kinds of details are fun points for me, even if not every viewer notices them.
I would like once again to thank artist Lee Yeon-jung, who introduced me to SUNO, and artist Yoon Jae-min, who worked on the sound.
