Berlin SUNKYU LEE – Put Yourself in the Shade
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
liebe Freunde der Galerie Irrgang,
hiermit laden wir Sie und Ihre Begleitung ganz herzlich am 9. Mai 2025 um 18 Uhr zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung Sunkyu Lee – Put Yourself in the Shade in unsere Berliner Räumlichkeiten, Friedrichstraße 232 ein.
Mit herzlichen Grüßen
Ihr Tobias Wachter
The installation will be rearranged every Thursday (May 15, 22, 29, and June 5).
Visitors are invited to enter the space, rearrange the objects, and reshape the structures—creating new rhythms and scenes in the process.
This exhibition began with someone suggesting to me, ‘How about “Put yourself in the shade” as the title?’
This curious instruction appears in Le piège de Méduse (The Ruse of Medusa), a piece by Erik Satie, as a direction for the performer.
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While the piece that the one must play is already composed, the instructions allow for a small degree of freedom—a space for personal interpretation within a fixed structure.
But what does put yourself in the shade actually mean?
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To take shelter in the shadows?
Could it be telling me to hide my ego as an artist?
Though it speaks of shade, is it actually about the light that brings form to the shadow?
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My attempts to interpret this mysterious direction became the starting point for this exhibition.
In many ways, I feel often as though I’m being “instructed” on how to live.
And yet, rather than simply following those instructions, I want to question them and move on my own terms.
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This exhibition is built around animal fencing as its central material.
These fences are typically designed to be assembled only at 90-degree angles.
Therefore I printed joints with different angles, allowing the materials to be connected in unconventional ways—curves, irregular forms, and deviations from the standard.
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Within the space, a projector connected to a 360-degree rotating camera casts light onto the walls, generating shadows from the objects placed within the room.
These shadows shift constantly, depending on how things are arranged and how visitors move through the space.
Here, the shade is never fixed—it is recreated again and again through interaction.
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To transform something—even slightly—is a small act of resistance, a way of adding new rhythms and structures to an already-given system.
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Movements are never fixed.
Scenes are not held.
Your intervention becomes yet another fleeting trace.
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Is this just a rehearsal,
or is the scene already in motion?
Text: Sunkyu Lee