Day and Night
In the Day and Night series, Jung Lee develops photographic works based on neon text installations situated within the specific spatial context of nocturnal landscapes, frequently positioned in water.
The series engages with an expanded linguistic register revolving around notions of intimacy, attachment, promise, transience, and existential states. This language is both immediately recognisable and culturally charged. Referencing Dante’s Divina Commedia, the words point to fundamental transitions and experiences without fixing their meaning. Through their displacement into isolated environments, the terms are removed from their conventional context and lose their immediate clarity. They begin to oscillate between intimacy and universality, between personal expression and collective projection.
The works operate across sculpture, installation, and photography. While the neon elements exist as physical objects, the photographic image constitutes the final work. Reflection, particularly in water, plays a central role in structuring the composition and producing a doubling of the text. Language in Day and Night is not used as a vehicle of meaning, but as material. Its legibility is partially disrupted through fragmentation, repetition, and spatial dislocation. The series examines the limits of linguistic expression, especially in relation to abstract and existential concepts.
