Candyland 2006

A series of digital print
C print, custom made frame with car spray paint
70 cm x 70 cm each

In her debut exhibition at Starkwhite, The Birth of TOKI: hundreds and thousands 2003, Lee revealed the computer graphics behind the creation of her digital personality.
Later she staged a larger video installation, BOOM BOOM super heroine super beauty, presenting TOKI as part fantasy, part superwoman/heroine and part.
These exhibitions revealed some of Lee’s central pre-occupations and her penchant for parodying and challenging views of the idealization of the female form
in Asian manga and anime, computer gaming and cyber culture, and the place of women in Korean culture.

With her new exhibition, dedicated to making a series of drawing from TOKI/Cyborg Project: game, pop and cyber world (2004-2006) with celebrating a publication
of an exhibition catalogue, Powder Room, her current exhibition Candyland is a series of digital prints, an illusion of both character and fantasy and establishes a
precedent for all future shows to come. All the drawings are from high polygon 3D model which reflects the preferable texture of TOKI and a new character Prince G
that Lee has been working on in 3D character modeling for years.

Circle frame of digital prints echoes the Powder Room exhibition (2005) and epitomizes a mirror both reflects and projects TOKI’s transformation and desire.
TOKI lures the audience by inviting the viewer into a fantasy, suggesting that she possesses the power to fulfil his desire in the creation of an ideal, virtual beauty.
TOKI’s exaggerated body epitomises the powerful image of an ideal beauty, and the ability of digital and surgical construction to create a ‘plastic’ fantasy world.
With Prince G Lee turns her attention to the male body, utilizing digital 3D animation and computer game design to critically examine new technology’s role in
myth making.

Again using 3D animation and digital prints, Lee presents a contemporary vision of beauty located in the spaces between fashion, cyber culture and computer
gaming. TOKI’s body parts become a seductive product of beautification and commodity, conjuring up cybernetics, aesthetics, plastic surgery, contemporary
mythology, consumerism, feminism, and eroticism.

Over the past five years Hye Rim Lee has established a substantial exhibition record in New Zealand, featuring in exhibitions at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery,
the City Gallery (Wellington), the Gus Fisher Gallery (Auckland) and Starkwhite. She has also been represented in international exhibitions including: OFF LOOP
’06 Festival, New Zealand Scapes, Barcelona, curated by Mercedes Vicente; OFF LOOP ’06 Festival, Busan Biennale 2006, Casa Asia, Barcelona, curated by
Manu Park; The Original Neo Aesthetics of Animamix, MoCA Shanghai, China, curated by Victoria Lu (2006); EXPOSED: black box & crystal ball, cross-cultural
contemporary media art project in public sites, London, curated by Ji Yoon Lee (2006); Animamix, The 2nd China International Cartoon and Animation Festival,
Hangzhou, China (2006); and Open Studio Exhibition, Samzie Space, Seoul, Korea (2006).

The artist would like to special thanks to the Screen Innovation Production Fund, a partnership between Creative New Zealand and the NZ Film Commission
for funding TOKI/Cyborg Project: game, pop and cyber world.

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