There’s a visual quiz circulating on social media at the moment that promises to reveal your unresolved childhood trauma. Do you see an elephant first or a forest? A butterfly or an apple? Jungjin Lee’s exhibition, called Unseen, is in some ways an elevated version of that. The series of large, black-and-white landscape photographs – all made last year in Iceland – do not tell you anything about the times, or the place. Instead what you see depends on what is buried in you – threatening to open up that scary, unbidden “unseen”.
Lee, who lives in New York, is little known in the UK beyond her photobooks. This small show of 10 works is her first solo show in the UK in a 30-year career. Her background is important in deciphering these images. Her first artistic training was in the traditional calligraphic arts, as a child growing up in South Korea. Later she studied ceramics at Hongik University in Seoul, where artists such as Lee Bul were among her peers.
