South Korean artist Jae-Hyo Lee is a master of manipulation. He turns discarded pieces of wood into attention-grabbing pieces of art that are both elegant and functional.
These incredibly sleek sculptures are the result of Lee’s meticulous work: having assembled various chunks of wood, he burns and then carefully polishes them to create visual contrast and a smooth surface, Boredpanda.com reported.
“I want to express wood’s natural characteristics without adding my intentions,” says Lee. “I like to make the most out of the material’s inherent feeling. Little things add up to transmit a stronger power, greater energy. That is why I have quite a lot of large pieces”.
Working with wood and metal, Lee, 50, produces immaculately formed, intricate sculptures that reveal a mastery of his materials and a winking, sophisticated wit.
Lee eschews traditional distinctions between the fine and applied arts and makes both functional and functionless works, presenting benches, stools, and tables alongside abstract, biomorphic forms. Burnt-black wood often serves as the sculptural ground into which Lee embeds discs of fresh wood or bent steel bolts and nails.
His wood-on-wood combinations read as playful meditations on the multifaceted nature of wood itself, while the nails that often cover his wooden surfaces seem transformed into worms - recalling a slithering, energetic galaxy of organisms.
