Joya / Jeffrey TY Lee
Sixteen landscape compositions (after Alexander Cozen), ink and wax on paper:
This is a series of 16 drawings based on a treatise by Alexander Cozens, the 18th century philosopher, entitled ‘The various species of landscape compositions in nature’. The work is an attempt to reflect landscape ecology as theoretical basis for nature in relation to empirical epistemology. For me, the detailed systematic description outlining each composition contradicts the way nature is perceived and experienced. While linguistic system attempts to rationalise within a coded everyday language, visual language resists closure. I have reworked the series with discontinued lines creating marks like cipher towards abstraction. The lines becoming fragments of a disappearing landscape, constantly shifting and evolving through layers of geological time, entropy and erosion.
Untitled (blueprint drawing) hand printed blueprint, ink, silver leaf:
This work was made for an exhibition in Fukuoka, Japan, reflecting on the recent natural atrocity. The printed image is a traditional ‘round house’ in Fujian province in China, a UNESCO world heritage site. The construction is made from rammed earth, brick, and stone with bamboo structures that has been scientifically proven as one of the earliest ecological sound construction. Overlapping the image is a line drawing of wave cut drawn with ink and silver leaf. I like the contrast of the two images, process and material used. Above all, I am interested in the concept of communal living in the round house, a reminder of human collaboration and settlement, an important aspect when faced with natural disaster and the need to live in harmonious relationship within our environment. An artist book – The Builder was conceived later using blueprint analogue process, printed individually with chemical emulsion creating unpredictable unique outcomes. The publication questions natural and man‐made forms through erosion and human intervention.
Forest with loggers, ink and wax on paper:
A forest scene with embedded figures cutting timbers. Formally, it looks like a huge fragmented dot drawing and the completeness of the work can only be viewed from a distance, through the eye tracking between the lines. Deforestation and human relationship with nature are among my initial thoughts.
