Silly Symphony: Lee Eun

The Contemporarily Cute “GIF-fication” of Melancholy

Yang Hyo-sil (Art Critic)

Belonging to a generation culturally influenced by animations such as Baby Dinosaur Dooly, and Sailor Moon, Lee Eun (b.1995) began her art career with “GIF-fication”, which involves artistically appropriating and translating GIFs into paintings. When turned into GIFs, animated characters, typically humanised animals, lose the narratives that enable interpretation. Instead, they are reduced to repetitive motions, perpetually vibrating and seizing, creating a (dis)pleasurable overlap that disturbs the steady viewing required for comfortable observation.

Lee repetitively translates the convulsing GIFs, which portray current sensibilities of the youth; often characterised as Gen Z, into paintings. While doing so she isolates the body in a dilemma. The body, which should serve as an invisible agent facilitating narrative transition to the next action, is left stranded without any inertial support.

The artist’s painterly transcription of these fragmented childhood images is more than a gesture. It is a deliberate approach that transforms the smooth (chemical) surface of film to an "untidy" Abstract Expressionist (material) base. This can be understood as a regressive act aiming to reconnect with the nostalgic past, whilst simultaneously emphasising the impossibility of reclaiming those times. This reversal, where the original work is an animation and the copy is a painting, may be comprehended in two ways: either as a challenge to the traditional authority of painting, or as an integrative act that revitalises the "old medium" of painting by incorporating elements of childhood and contemporary youth within a mature format.

By referencing the past and placing anthropomorphised animals, with whom the artist identifies, in a state of seizure, Lee eliminates the notion of progress and future. This results in a schizophrenic repetition of inaction, an element present in both 21st century GIFs and Lee’s “GIF-fication”. I cannot help but explain this a shared sentiment of a particular generation experiencing the upheavals of history within their existential awareness. The fatigue and convulsions experienced by Gen Z are physical signs of catastrophe that my generation; once acknowledged as a symbol of progressive history, must learn from. These characters, benefiting from the "Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)," manifest a state of ongoing turmoil. The artist portrays tragic modernity as an adorable scene, featuring inert, naive animals. Through Lee’s painterly signature of "GIF-fication," I perceive a logic of sensation belonging to a time and generation I do not know. They are the victims and survivors of the progressive historical perspective upheld by the older generations. They are the abjects. 

Widespread premonitions of catastrophes and apocalyptic events appear by targeting the bodies of minorities as hosts and places of cohabitation. Here, the past and present form “relations” in ways we do not understand, with the future left out. Young and foolish bodies do not know how to meet the past that keeps returning. They stay loyal to pleasures that are unproductive and therefore seen as inferior. To reflect maturity, one would expect Lee’s GIF-fication based on original GIFs to roll downhill into collapse, as if real wheels and a slope was built in. However, in reality they look cuter and harmless for younger viewers. In the artist’s work, which is refined but not overly calculated, what I sense clearly is the melancholy in the “post” discourses. I note that the artist’s brushstrokes are somewhat passionate. Like Saturn, “the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays” (Arendt), her motion in place shows the bankruptcy of a utopian future through regressive movement. Even so, within a catastrophic scene, it shows the possibility of minorities who survive through their own unique gestures. This possibility appears even without future, meaning or liberation. To live as “this body”, always repeating that it could die at any moment without regret, and to endure the present through regressive repetition. These bodies are clearly new. They are young, so fresh. They are cute, so harmless. They are melancholic, so emblematic. They are "collective", so political. A ragged crowd. One that failed to die again today and so seems alive. Experts in a loathsome life, unmatched in their ability to remain alive in a state just before the end. 

The solo exhibition 《Silly Symphony》 centers on a roll painting inspired by 「Flowers and Trees」 (1932), from the Disney’s 75 episode short animation series 『Silly Symphony』(1929–39), made using the “Mickey Mousing” technique. This particular animation is recognised as the first commercially produced full-colour film created using three-strip Technicolour. It is a monumental tribute that "rewinds" (or unfurls) a 7 minute and 50 second animation found on YouTube into a 35 meter length. Lee mentioned that she watched the Disney animation 「Fantasia 2000」 approximately 300 times on rewind after first seeing it at the age of five. Later, viewing 「Flowers and Trees」 as an adult, she found a simple fairy-tale narrative. In spring, where all things come alive, an old male tree becomes jealous of a young and healthy male tree courting a female tree. Unable to control his anger, the old tree sets the forest on fire. With the help of many creatures, the fire is put out, and the young male tree marries the female tree. The story is a predictable, happy ending built on a flat narrative.

The "Mickey Mousing" technique, where animation is synchronised precisely with pre-existing or specially composed classical music, offered a form of escapism for the ordinary and poor individuals during the Great Depression. While scholars like Adorno, who criticised American mass culture, argued that Disney’s animations erased the distinctions of art, those whose daily lives were a struggle for survival and uncertainty found enjoyment in them. Children, placed on the same level as animals, workers or commoners whose own lives were physically and mentally impossible, were deceived, captivated, and comforted by the movement unfolding before their eyes.

The old tree is GIF-fied in Lee’s roll painting as the single villain around which the narrative is constructed. It appears and disappears only as a backdrop, allowing the good characters to remain happy. Stretching a 7 minutes and 50 seconds of animation into a 35 metre length, the artist replicates the cut-edited form of a cartoon film into a single continuous frame. This obsessive act is a reinterpretation by an adult painter of primal childhood experiences. It is also an inactive gesture, borrowing a known text, originating from the 1930s, instead of creating new imagery. At the same time, it becomes a performance that captures the film’s false movements through the 35 metre duration. For adults who long for the state of childhood, and for children themselves, it is above all a cute experience.

While the Great Depression remains a historical event, the melancholy of the present suggests that the past has not truly passed, but continues to recur. The artist explained her preference for inverted, paradoxical imagery, stating she enjoys the feeling of a "faded, dusty utopia" when looking at things from the past, or observing "dust settling on things that shouldn't have dust". Given that the term "utopia" has been overused and exhausted, the phrase "dusty utopia" offers a "sad yet beautiful" alternative. The addition of the adjective "Silly" to their series indicates that the Disney brothers, as adults, were aware of the implications. The word conveys a nuanced mixture of contempt, pity, and self-awareness for those who return to the status quo; a state without a future, after experiencing comfort and wonder through these images.

The artist, who describes her work as "colouring" rather than painting, thoughtfully engages in a repetitive regression into an immature childhood through faithful references to children's culture. Her "GIF-fication" creates a 35-meter installation filled with things that are old, dusty, and crumbling; a suffering adulthood, a contentless adulthood that kills time by misappropriating childhood. And this, of course, is: Decidedly 21st-century.