"Wozu is a German word that means 'what for,' writes South Korean photographer Dongwook Lee. "As seen in Plato’s allegory of the cave, all of us are constantly caught between fictions and realities, battling on the thin line between pleasure and pain.
Wozu [opening at Blue Sky Gallery] is a series that shows the states of inner collision among scared egos – individuals who want to look away from the truth and who, despite the clamor of voices around them, remain largely silent.
In an endless circle of life and death - born in and across the water to breathe his last breath - humans have been searching for the reasons for their existence and resisted the world and self-made limitations.
The water in this project represents the death of the physical body, and at the same time, of the soul driven to despair. The peaceful but violent attribute of water is very similar to that of a human being. I articulate the collision between egos through the mix of water and the human body.
In Norse mythology, humans are often depicted as fruits fallen off the trees. Likewise, in the story of the Tower of Babel, the tower is reminiscent of a tall tree, which seems to describe a human challenge against God, as well as a desperate struggle to climb the tower to find the origin.
We, the defective human beings, live by floating the world of chaos. The incessant questions derived from chaos might be the reason or signification of our existence.
Wozu originated from the bizarre and mystic image of myself reflected in the water.
These sentences were written right after I suddenly awoke from sleep, opening the starting point of my work:
I saw a reflection of myself in the water, and there was a stranger.
I wish he would disappear tomorrow."
