Jeewi Lee

In her works – installations, sculptures, pictorial objects, and videos – Jeewi Lee explores traces, memory, and temporality, as well as natural processes and materials. In Where Fragments Linger by the Sea, the artist turns her attention to the theme of “sand,” which is both universal and highly topical.

In the exhibition, sand functions on the one hand as an artistic material from which Jeewi Lee creates sculptures and abstract sand paintings. On the other hand, individual grains of sand – from coastal locations such as Taean-bando (Korea), New York and Connecticut (USA), Alentejo (Portugal), Mallorca (Spain), Dakar (Senegal), and Wilhelmshaven (Germany) – take centre stage as small and large-scale sculptures. These tiny grains of sand form the starting point of a complex CT scanning and sand-printing process through which the monumental works are created and then meticulously finished by hand. In this process, the delicate and unique structures of each grain are revealed, each bearing distinctive testimony to origin, time, and landscape. In addressing the complex geometric and constructive aspects of this process, Jeewi Lee collaborates with the geometric researcher Phillip C. Reiner, with whom she develops her sand sculptures and silkscreen prints.

As a symbol, sand stands for infinity, innumerability, but also for the everyday. Within the exhibition programme, sand – now one of the most important, most widely used, and increasingly scarce resources after water – is also explored as a raw material. It is used in the construction industry for the production of concrete, mortar, and asphalt, as well as in glass manufacturing. Beyond this, sand plays a role in the production of microchips, jeans and cosmetics, in water filtration, flood and coastal protection, and landscape design. Global consumption amounts to around 50 billion tonnes annually, with a per capita consumption of approximately 18 kilograms per day.

Against the backdrop of this ecological, economic, and social framework, Lee’s works invite viewers to consider grains of sand as nomads, washed from coast to coast – including the coast of the Jadebusen in Wilhelmshaven, carrying within them traces of past eras, human influence, and shifting landscapes. The exhibition itself also becomes a landscape, composed of nearly monochromatic works that coalesce into a concentrated, immersive, almost meditative space.

Where Fragments Linger by the Sea is the first institutional exhibition of Jeewi Lee’s sand works. Even their initial presentation in 2024/2025 at Galerie Sexauer (Berlin) attracted significant media attention.

For this exhibition, a series of new works will be created using the fine-grained, smoothly rounded sand of the North Sea region. Among them will be a large-scale sculpture based on a grain of sand from Wilhelmshaven’s Südstrand.