Artist Talk : So Youn Lee & 08AM
So Youn Lee is a Korean contemporary artist based in LA. Inspired by her experience as an Asian female immigrant in the USA, Lee portrays narratives of human existence as aliens and voyagers with the original character 'Mango'. Much of her work has been showcased at galleries in the US and throughout the world and has also done collaborations with global brands such as ALDO and Lancôme.
08AM is a Korean contemporary artist based in Seoul. His works contain a dialog of what is a creation with originality. He repeats the process of union and dissolution to express his identity through visual forms that no one has ever seen and other times that are familiar to everyone. He has exhibited in various galleries such as Lotte, or part of League of Legends, and worked with Samsung, Lotte, Puma, Haagen-Daz, and many more.
Before you started NFT, what kind of works did you create?
So Youn Lee worked as a fine artist for about 6 years. Working primarily on canvas with oil paint, exhibiting in galleries worldwide. As her work became known through Instagram, she continued her creative activities while doing various works such as corporate collaborations, toy releases, and print releases along with the exhibition.
After graduating from university in 2010, I have been creating for about 10 years. I mostly work on oil paintings on canvas. Oil is a material that can be neatly blended like digital artwork to express a three-dimensional effect, so it is used regularly. The first time I exhibited a painting while drawing by myself was at the Character Licensing Fair held in Seoul in 2012, and in fact, there was no concept of exhibiting paintings until then. Since then, with the support and help of many people, I have been continuing my creative activities by adding exhibitions and art collaborations through various opportunities.
08am has been active in the creative fields the last 10 years since graduating from college in 2010. Working with oil paint as standard medium since it blends to create a sense of form as clear as digital artworks. I have been working on paintings and started my first exhibition at 2012 Character Licensing Fair in Seoul. Since then I have been privileged to continue working creatively through various exhibitions and art collaboration with the support and help of everyone.
How did you start NFT? :
SYL - Since 2017, I have known about Ethereum or Crypto Kitties, but did not know anything about NFT Art. One day, I received a message on Instagram. It was October of 2020, and one of my followers discovered that someone had downloaded a picture from my website, impersonating me and fake-minting on Rarible. They even had a fan meeting in Decentraland. That's how I first learned about NFT art. At first, I thought that I had to use only one platform, so I asked around and heard that SuperRare was the best, so I minted on SuperRare. That was February of this year.
08am - In my case, I was sharing a lot of material research and work stories with other artists in the clubhouse, but after the copyright case of artist So Youn Lee as discussed, I became interested after learning that there is such a thing as NFT. I was sharing information with the people in the clubhouse rooms, and then I started minting on OpenSea.
Please tell us about one of your works:
SYL - When I was introduced to NFT, I thought a lot about how to approach it differently from my usual gallery work. In fine art, I reflect on my position as a contemporary artist in art history, and in NFT I wanted to show work that could focus a little more on Mango's world.
Mango is a character that was born from various experiences I had while living as an Asian woman in the United States. Although they have the same face, they have different personalities and settings. Distinguished by their hairstyles, just as cells divide in the human body to create different body parts, I was inspired by self-replication and division.
Among them, the ‘Wave Mango’ that appears in the work is the first mango born in the world of mangoes, and it was created from a white wave on the day a star fell into the sea. It is a setting that a change occurred due to a collision where life existed only as a possibility and a wave mango appeared, and it is the most interesting theory among the theories of the origin of life on Earth. Because they were the first to have consciousness, it is a setting that he has a mission to make the world a more positive and better place. The part that I think was expressed most satisfactorily within the work is the part where the background and each element in the work is contained in a very soft misty space. The world of mangoes filled with Aether, the fifth element advocated by Aristotle, is very well expressed.
08am - I would like to introduce a new item that was dropped in time for this event today. I was the first “PARAcell in the CryptoWorld!” It's already been two months since I minted an animated series with the title. This work called Pop-eye is a creation that appears in my original artwork, and it is an expression of a being that penetrates the essence. It is the eye that watches the world and the changes of the times. These eyes are wary of monopoly and injustice and do not take their eyes off them. The background of the creation of this work is based on the sharing of information and media, and the background music was also created by using information obtained through various channels. And this time, I prepared it with unlockable content for the first time. We plan to send limited edition popeye goods and PARAKID sticker packs as gifts~! (frown)
How do NFT art and physical art compare? Or do they each have their own roles?
SYL- First of all, it got busier. As the scope of work has expanded, in the past, canvas work (planar work) was the main focus, and the rest in ceramics or sculptures, while now there are many instances that I need to learn new tools to work on my art. In those cases, we work together within the community to give help back and forth so the feeling of making the projects of 'possibility’ that I put off and making them into reality one by one is very exciting.
When working on an original painting, it takes a lot longer from concept to completion of the work. First of all, due to the nature of the material, I cannot force the material to dry, cure, or bake the ceramic, but I think that in digital work, except for rendering, the speed of work is much faster and more efficient in the production process. In the case of physical work, the limitation of the working space cannot be ignored, and the difference is that it can work with fewer materials in a much smaller space. And because there are creative expressions that can only be done digitally, I want to show this part to more people. Sometimes it feels like having a new invisible hand.
In terms of seeing NFT as another material for expanding my world of work, there are areas that can only be realized through digital media. I think I can only draw out the good points of experience. If it is important for the audience to come and see and experience the actual exhibition, then the exhibition held in the virtual world expresses the flow of time more powerfully, starting with the concept of physical, which many artists try these days. I want to further explore the realm of 3D work that can show animations that can be done or parts that cannot be shown in flatwork so that they can be better incorporated into the world of work. In real work, work is developing toward expressing the physicality of painting. Currently, NFT is very interested in 3D and voxel work.
08am - First of all, I feel a big difference in the market. The effort and time required to build an artist's narrative through art activities in the existing art market and to meet a collector may be unpredictably long. But what I felt while working on NFT was a completely different feeling. Online social media is the main background, and I was surprised to see that the speed of communication and the consumption of content is very fast and various events are taking place in a matter of weeks or days. At first, I was swept away to follow the fast movement which resulted in a bit of setback in my overall work schedule as I lost the sense of speed in physical art, but now I am trying to keep pace with both speed and direction.
In fact, I wanted to know more about blockchain in the middle of the two parallels, but I had an opportunity to participate in a blockchain study that was being moderated in Handao, and the more I studied through the study, the more I felt the narrative of crypto spirit and decentralization. I did. From the Cryptography Club in the 1970s to the current cypherpunk in the 1990s, which became the predecessor of Dao (= previous form), information has been shared in various ways, so that many people can understand the situation in which digital assets using blockchains have been traded. As I grew older, I realized that my NFTart didn't have the spirit they were trying to achieve by popularizing information.
So, I was happy and grateful at the time that the collection was quickly and diverse, but it is regrettable that they did not take into account the spirit of their ignorance who accomplished this field. When I come back, I will continue to do NFTaft even if I want to solve that disappointment, and I will continue my activities in the existing art market with physical art, but I do not think I will divide the two into different roles. In both directions, the narrative of one creator will be melted, and I plan to reinterpret the social and human messages contained in the real painting with another inspiration and turn it into a work in the form of NFT.
Both artists are leaders in expanding the usage of the new media and actively educating new artists who are entering the community.
Their journey and insights are inspiring for all artists across all forms of medium including digital painting, 3d modeling, animation, sculpture and physical painting.
