An image, now, is something you scroll, swipe, click, walk past. Did your brain even register it? Ladder/Chain, Juyon Lee and Emma Safir’s two-person exhibition at HESSE FLATOW, simply asks you to stay with one a little longer.
Descending the stairs, the first thing you encounter is light. In Juyon Lee’s Bodiless Travels V, a length of neon traverses warped glass broken into two parts before slipping beyond its edges. Embedded within the glass is an image of her grandfather’s body, shrouded in paper lotus petals at a funeral Lee could not attend. Nearby, its glow catches Emma Safir’s pewter casts, installed low on the wall where you might otherwise look for an electrical outlet.
Inside the main gallery, another of Safir's pewter casts hangs where a light switch could be. Her green upholstered panel, Boboli Gardens, hangs behind Lee’s low glass work, Parabolic Traces – Burnmark Video Call I, whose proportions recall a coffee table. For a moment, you feel as if you are standing in a living room. A switch, an outlet, a wall hanging, something like furniture. Then it turns strange. Safir's sockets conduct nothing; Lee's table holds nothing. What lingers is the afterimage of a domestic space.
Ladder/Chain, July 17 - August 14, 2026, HESSE FLATOW, New York.
