Chang Hyun Lee
b.1997, Seoul, South Korea Works and lives in Seoul, South Korea
Lee’s practice tracks how bodies are measured, divided, and remade within systems of patterning, craft, and display. His body works begin by casting the torso or shoulder, then building papier-mâché shells from pulped pattern paper and discarded prints. Cut open and rejoined, the hollow forms retain seams, pressure marks, and paper grain. The method enacts a reversal: if industry tends to de-humanize the body by flattening it into patterns, Lee first pulverizes that pattern language, then recovers the body as a sensitive shell.
Jupon
2022
Papier-mâché assemblage
50 x 110 x 15 cm
The silhouettes often recall Greek sculpture at the pre-action moment—poised, partial, and oriented more by breath and stance than by anatomy—which aligns recovery with form rather than with pathos.
Untitled (Main 11)
2025 Paper maché with dressmaking patterns, scissors
12 x 9 x 26 cm
In the Working hand pieces, reconstructed hands in recycled pattern paper function as a material archive of repetitive gestures (cutting, sewing), where surface wavers between form and trace. A third line of work—cyanotypes and embroideries developed from museum collections—reanimates chinoiserie panels and other decorative images to show how ornament historically aestheticized violence. Across these strands, Lee makes sculpture a language of contact: paper, fabric, and plaster hold the memory of touch, while the works ask how making can return a body—split by systems—back to a legible, if incomplete, presence.
