1453 Mission StreetSan Francisco, CA 94103Google Map »
Reception Friday, December 2, 2011, 6-8pm
In his Torso Series from 2010, June Yong Lee creates photographic images intimately and arrestingly corporeal. Without the subject's face we are left with a portrait that's more like a fingerprint, unique to the subject and yet mysteriously impersonal. The subjects are splayed out before us, simultaneously unnerving and beautiful, so that we are seduced into staying longer with each image, each body, traversing the maps we've been offered, the drawn tectonics, ridges and crests, freckles and moles. Hair; stretch marks; scars, sometimes recognizably medical, at other times scrawled across the chest; piercings; tattoos, discreet or sprawling like the A of anarchy on a young female body; these are traces of histories to which we aren't privy, at which we can only guess, inserting our own experiences and queries to interpret the markings.
Born in 1978 in South Korea, June Yong Lee lives and works in Philadelphia. He received his MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington and BFA from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He is an assistant professor of photography at Arcadia University. Working in both digital and historic processes, Lee's images examine personal identity through the skin and body. He has exhibited widely and his work is part of the art collection at the Kinsey Institute.
www.juneyonglee.com
