Less skin, more sea, rocks and sky

Hoon Li: Holy Mother Nature!
Starkwhite
28 November – 24 December 2008

This collection of digtal photographs and lightboxes shows Hoon Li’s (previously he was 'Jae Hoon Lee') most recent developments. A few have been seen already in Te Tuhi and MIC shows, and it is good to see them again, this time within his own very singular context. There is no moving image work here, as might be expected. Yet the photographs are some of the largest Hoon Li has made. With their dramatic symmetry they are quite extraordinary.

One image of a huge circular lake that is like an enclosed estuary, about 40 cm tall and nearly 160 wide, is the most bizarre, starkly beautiful panorama you could ever imagine. Nearby as a contrast are two vertical images of vegetation-covered, rocky outcrops that precariously teeter on small islands in the sea. Vividly detailed, they seem aligned parallel to a standing viewer, and may even slightly lean towards them.

Two further horizontal works, glowing lightboxes of panoramas taken out of a plane window, are composites of several sequential images. Placed low on the floor they relate spatially to a couple of nearby coffins covered with printed, computer keyboard letters. To speculate, Hoon Li seems to be making a joke here about the death of analogue photography.

Li (or Lee) originally become known around 2003 for his images of blended skin textures, some of which was tattooed, much of it just blemishes, pimples and freckles. In this current show there is a giant vertical hand, like that of a Buddha, pressed against some glass. The patterns of fingerprints and fine palm lines are in great detail, with subtle blotches and translucent fleshy patinas. This image seems to provide the ‘Holy’ part of his exhibition title, the ‘Mother Nature’ part self-evident in other works.

Brick by brick

Jae Hoon Lee: Tomb
Te Tuhi, Pakuranga
3 April - 28 June 2008

Jae Hoon Lee is well known as a digital whizzo who effortlessly produces mesmerising dvds of transmuting skin or leaf patterns, or else lightboxes and still photographs of bizarre wave and cloud formations. Although it is his manipulation of images of natural forms that he built his reputation on, more recently he has been investigating cultural morphologies too.

His current show at Te Tuhi uses material gathered from a recent trip to Egypt. Part of it consists of a simple but beautiful coffin which emits a soundtrack of Egyptian music recorded at various festivals. Death, and its significance for Egyptian monuments and tourism, is seen as an effective provider of marketable images here.

Tomb has two main visual elements - vertical photographs based on manipulated photographed sections of the pyramids. They are richly detailed with layers of brick walls and other assorted surfaces –occasionally with scaffolding. Such strangely hybrid tower formations are too ungainly to be realistic. At first glance they could be giant standing figures (or huge blind heads) from Central Africa or even the Pacific.

They seem to be also peculiar columns of sharply angled, teetering temples stacked upon each other so that subsidence occurs below. Generating references to archaeological strata and vanished civilizations, and highly ambiguous, their appeal comes from shifting brick textures and patterns. As with his fantastical cloud and wave photographs, it is the amazing detail and acuity, more than overall composition, that makes his work so distinctive.