The Translucent Door
Gu Nayeon | Art Critic
Discipline
Viewing a work of art, we simultaneously glimpse the artist’s life projected on it, because an artist’s outlook and philosophy toward life permeate the very anatomy of the piece. Every artist has a sincere, truthful vernacular that can only be manifested through their work; the way they experience and perceive the world is articulated through that language. The artist longs for the right material that will realize this language —a medium that shapes the artist’s tongue and serves as an extension of their physical body. Sungmi Lee’s work embraces the arduous time spent between her contemplation of the world and the material itself. The black soot, gradually taking shape as a bundle of incense sticks burns with flickering flames, is the embodiment of what Gaston Bachelard describes as “the man
pensively seated by his fireplace in complete solitude at a time when the fire is burning brightly as if it were the very voice of this solitude.”[1]
For Sungmi Lee, fire equals incense. Its purpose is not to shine, but to combust. If ash is the vestige of fire, soot is the vestige of smoke. The smoke of incense rises vertically in a supple line before quietly dispersing through the air and filling a space. This ascent of smoke evokes invisible beings, conjuring a sense of ritualistic mysticism. However, flame,
smoke, incense, and soot do not offer themselves up as art materials. This is why, while viewing Untitled #600, we find ourselves imagining the time the artist spent crafting it. In a space akin to a vacuum, with no impurities, the endlessly burning flames must have released words that intertwined with the artist's movements, materializing into a language of soot. In the time filled with haze, the artist’s vision must have blurred, her breathing must have become labored. Yet, as currents of air bring form to the black soot, the light and silence would have harmonized in the artist’s hands, transforming into an image.
In the wake of these thoughts, I ask: Why does this artist labor through such an arduous process? No—the more appropriate question would be: Why does she labor through such an arduous process to arrive at a form? To encounter the unpredictable image amidst the flames and smoke, the artist seems to undergo a spiritual form of discipline, a personal ritual. This discipline resembles a long sail—one where you constantly face the undulations of transparent water upon the vast, pathless surface of the great ocean. The nature of water, which subdues flame, is translated into the rough surface of translucent Plexiglas, turned white by countless rounds of sanding, as it catches fleeing traces of fire. As the water-like transparency and wave-like white surface meet the black traces of fire, Lee’s work constructs a space for lost time.
Inside the towering Untitled #600, the smoke and black traces hold on to the memories and vestiges of fire, as if the flames are still roaring. This translucent monolith preserves the strokes of the artist who mediated the serendipity and inevitability arising from the relationship between flame, incense, smoke, and soot. The solid geometric form becomes the outer skin that envelops the time within; as viewers, we witness the work
constantly transforming into different guises as we gaze upon the piece from all sides. As the discipline embodied in this work intersects with the present moment, a microcosm of unpredictable experience emerges. Within the translucent monolith, images unfold a spatial horizon; as the distinctions between past and present, near and far dissolve, Lee’s work becomes like smoke as it mingles with us.
Her drawings—which carve deep trajectories of evanescent, vaporized time possess a unique sense of distance as they appear as images — at the boundary between sculpture and painting. They are three-dimensional structures that use the flat plane as support; a distance that opens up endlessly when an infinite space filled with air is confined. The immortal traces left behind by the mortality of the flame mirror the duality of vast distance and infinite time. This oxymoron, where the temporary and the eternal coexist, is only complete when manifested as space. This state, which Lee describes as the “temperature of time” and a “belief in the process,” inherently involves accidental factors
that the artist cannot fully control. This may involve the interference of foreign substances latent in the air or a sudden gust of wind. The flame silently vaporizes these countless factors, leaving behind the narrative of ‘Lee’s drawing.’ This is made possible only when the artist opens herself to the vitality of the material. To borrow the words of Bachelard, these
forms are “images charged with that rich oneiric matter which provides inexhaustible sustenance for the material imagination.”[2]
Material
Lee notes that she has a tendency to personify her material. In Crying for You, resin drips over a mushroom-like form and hardens in to a figure. This transparent material, flowing down like tears, falls to the floor to create Painting by Sculpture (Crying for You). Mushrooms sprout from dead trees; at the apparent end of a life, nature brings forth new life
in the form of a fungus. The tears shed while witnessing a death harbor a hidden, earnest longing for life. Lee treats her artistic materials as if they were people, and this creates a cyclical embrace between the work born from the material and the material that breathes through the work. Thus, the tears shed “for you” fall to the ground to create yet another
piece, which in turn encounters a new dimension of life. The resin that falls from Crying for You forms round wave patterns in Painting by Sculpture, resembling a mushroom. This becomes a beautiful bridge created by the vitality of the material, as well as a moment where sculpture and painting come to envelop one another.
The patterns of soot created by burning itself like a flame, or the sculptures and paintings made by flowing over lifeforms sprouting from death, Lee’s work reveals a phase of renewal discovered when one practices art by focusing on the inherent vitality of the material. The tenacity of Lee’s practice—collecting shattered fragments of broken car glass and meticulously reassembling them into surprisingly solid and serene forms—is rooted in her desire to reveal the intrinsic value hidden within discarded objects. The act of personifying objectified materials reflects the artist’s intentions. In one interview, she states:
I feel a sense of pathos for these meager materials that nobody wants. I wanted to
take these fragile, insignificant things and make them more valuable than they were
before, into shining objects more precious than jewels. . . . By giving new life to objects
considered trivial and worthless, I felt that I, as a wounded and weak individual, was being healed.[3]
For Lee, material is not merely a component of her work. Instead, it represents the return of artificial objects—whose perceived value has expired—back to their primal, elemental state, which in turn becomes a new manifestation of vitality. The inherent properties of the material absorb the artist's arduous journey, forming a communion that finally coalesces into a shape. These objects, regenerated as both healed entities and aesthetic subjects, possess a luster and texture that can only be attained by absorbing the painstaking passage of time.
For instance, the pieces from the Unfolding series have surfaces as sleek and soft as glazed porcelain. Though they may appear to be ceramic at first glance, they are actually a combination of stainless steel mesh and resin. Their cool sheen which — leaves the original materials unrecognizable and refuses to permit even the slightest scratch—is the result of
countless rounds of sanding. This obsessive, repetitive pursuit of a flawless state strives toward a moment where the artist’s inner self becomes one with the surface of the work. Through the projection of the self, the personification of material becomes a metaphor for transformative identity. The folded and crumpled paper-like shapes reveal a body that is easily distorted by external forces but has yet to be fully unfolded. However, the smooth exterior radiates a glow that welcomes light more warmly than anything else. The artist’s process of creating a work leaves behind traces of time, with her specific actions and dynamics serving as the clock hands. The vast span of time and space the artist invests in
her life is submerged directly into the object of the work. The reason Lee felt that her own life became smoother as the surfaces of her works did is that her work is not merely an object standing before us—it is a part of the artist herself.
Consequently, a change in the work naturally signifies a change in the artist. Disciplines to Become a Stone #2 demonstrates a shift away from polished luster toward the rugged, uneven texture of a stone. The desire for a flawless life has evolved into an acceptance of the inevitable bumps and irregularities of existence, accompanied by a meditation on integrity—becoming a solid stone that cannot be easily broken by anything. It is an attempt to become a natural stone by using materials that can never truly be stone. The richness of attempting the impossible even while knowing it is impossible reveals the meditative grain of Lee’s artistic world. We are confronted with the form of life we crave and
the solitude of the daily routines necessary to draw closer to it. In that very place of vast uncertainty, Lee works silently and without fail. This seemingly futile and reckless Sisyphus-like endeavor, a repetition performed by a guardian of life, is the essential gesture of her work.
Translucence
In Lee’s work, the translucent Plexiglas box is simultaneously open and sealed. This oxymoron encapsulates the “half-open” (半開) nature of her practice. Bachelard suggests that “the door is an entire cosmos of the Half-open”[4] which compels us to investigate human existence as a being standing on the threshold between the inside and outside. I Wish I Could Reach You captures a moment where intense inner emotions pour out silently and endlessly onto a landscape viewed through the artist’s eyes. Here, her gaze serves as the “surface that separates the region of the same from the region of the other,” a “zone of sensitized surface.”[5]
Bachelard notes that “there are two ‘beings’ in a door, that a door awakens in us a two-way dream, that it is doubly symbolical.”[6] The distant Hudson River in New York, captured in a photograph, encompasses this two-way dream—between the person she cannot reach and the person she longs to reach. This is also telegraphed through the
endlessly distant, shining surface that transparently covers the river landscape. A transparent cornea is draped between the landscape and the gaze. Like a half-open door, the interior, which seeks to accept someone along with the outside world, is constantly transmitted through this transparent cornea. Standing before this half-open door that once
hung between the artist’s inner self and the outer world, we naturally find ourselves entering the artist’s interior landscape.
The language of “translucency” in her work is no different from the “half-open” door. It represents the interval between the time of the past, engraved as soot within the translucent boxes sanded countless times, and the viewers who perceive it in the present. In Burning Karma, a myriad of intersecting silver lines on translucent Mylar film form a circle.
The paradox of repetitive traces creating chaos, which then condenses into an orderly circle, becomes an image of the “Karmic Fire (業火)” suggested in the title. Our countless actions in life leave traces that become karma, and the act of burning that karma away may be the very cycle and archetype of living. The trajectory of silver, functioning as both light and color on the translucent screen becomes a microcosm of the world woven by these tangled karmic relationships. Confronting this piece, we come face to face with the fact that while we cannot open ourselves transparently to the world, we all accept the world through a translucent surface. Lee’s work, which generates an intersection of time and space through light, provides a translucent door through which we embrace the metaphor of an abyss dwelling on the surface of existence.
I once asked Lee what she gains from such an arduous and disciplined process. She replied that while she works, she harbors a “vague hope of becoming a better person.” What is the desire to become a better person through one’s work if not the attitude of a practitioner of spiritual discipline? Her translucent language can also be found in her drawings. The images are not composed of stubborn lines but of colors permeating one another to create a landscape. As witnessed in Where the Wind Has Passed, those transparent phenomena and dynamics of color are revealed as translucent hues through a return to form. Like mist rising from the material, the reverberation of the material spreading across the plane does not act as a noisy interference but fully embraces each other in endless silence. Lee states that “drawing governs my work.” To assert that drawing is the core of her practice means that the essence of her work lies latent within it. Drawing visualizes the structure of thought, which is constructed as both spatial and temporal. When responding to the countless contingencies that arise during this process of construction, her discipline becomes a form of the world encountered through a translucent surface.
[1] Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Routledge, 1964), 3.
[2] Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie, trans. Maria Jola (Beacon Press, 1994), 20.
[3] Jee Young Maeng, “Interview with Sungmi Lee,” Sungmi Lee Studio, accessed April 3,
2026, https://www.sungmileestudio.net/복제-어디에나-있는그리고-어디에도-없는-2014
[4] Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Beacon Press, 1969), 222.
[5] Ibid, 222.
[6] Ibid, 224.