Cine-Forest: Awakening Bloom
Seongnam Festival 2025, Bundang Central Park Outdoor Theatre, Seongnam, Korea | 19 - 21 September 2025, 19:30
Seongnam Festival 2025, Bundang Central Park Outdoor Theatre, Seongnam, Korea | 19 - 21 September 2025, 19:30
Cine-Forest: Awakening Bloom, directed by media artist Jinjoon Lee, will be presented from September 19 to 21 at Bundang Central Park in Seongnam. Transforming the forest into a living, sentient entity and active agent of the performance, the project introduces the concept of a “Media Symphony,” where ultra-high-resolution projections, a 70-piece orchestra, a 1,000-voice civic choir, and AI-generated compositions converge with natural sounds and everyday recordings of the city. In this vast 'open-air' theatre, light, sound, and human voices merge with the living forest, transiting the audience into a state where every moment they stand becomes the very center of the unfolding stage.
BB&M Gallery, Seoul, Korea | 23 August - 18 October, 2025
PREVIEW | 21 August 2025, 17:00
Champagne Supernova, a solo exhibition by Jinjoon Lee, runs from August 23 to October 18 at BB&M Gallery in Seongbuk-dong, Seoul. The exhibition explores the ontology of the post-digital era, where myth and history, memory and data, identity and anonymity converge. The titular work, Champagne Supernova, evokes the paradox of dazzling brilliance and imminent extinction, suggesting that the fleeting radiance of light, bubbles, and exploding stars embodies the traces and memories we leave within a digitized universe.
UPCOMING
Academy of the Future Keynote Speech & Public Talk
TOPIC | International Forum on "the Role of Academies: A Future Vision of Art, Education and Society"
DATES | 27 September, 2025
VENUE | University Town Campus, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, China
Keynote Speech by Jinjoon Lee
TOPIC | Creative AI: Use and Critical Thinking
DATES | 27 September 2025, 09:00 - 11:00
VENUE | 900-Seat Lecture Hall, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
This talk explores the creative potential of AI through Jinjoon Lee's media-art projects, while also raising concerns that overreliance on AI may weaken critical thinking—a particularly important issue in arts education. Rooted in a humanistic perspective, the presentation calls for a reflective and critically engaged approach that prioritizes hands-on experimentation and conceptual rigor over superficial use of technology.
A Dialogue between Xiang Biao and Jinjoon Lee Public Talk
TOPIC | AI, Art, and Thought
DATES | 27 September 2025, 19:30
VENUE | South Lecture Theatre, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
How should humans respond to AI? What role might art and thought, particularly those rooted in Asian traditions, play in this regard? Korean media artist Jinjoon Lee, a pioneer of AI art, will discuss with renowned anthropologist Xiang Biao (Max Planck Institute) how humans can make AI the subject of artistic creation and reflection, rather than becoming the subject of AI.
About Xiang Biao
Born and raised in China, Xiang Biao is a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He studied sociology at Beijing University, China, and received his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford, UK. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford before he joined MPI in 2021. He has worked on migration and social changes in China, India, and other parts of Asia and is currently exploring a “common concerns” approach in social research.
Wednesday Culture Lecture Series Special Lecture
TOPIC | The Future Arrived Early : AI and Art
DATES | 24 September 2025, 10:30 - 12:00
VENUE | Sungsan Art Hall Small Theatre, Changwon, Korea
HOST | Changwon Cultural Foundation
DATES | 24 September 2025, 10:30 - 12:00
VENUE | Sungsan Art Hall Small Theatre, Changwon, Korea
HOST | Changwon Cultural Foundation
Lecture on AI and Korean Art at SOAS Special Lecture
TOPIC | New Possibilities in the Era of Technology Convergence - Reimagining Korean Cultural Arts for the Post-Digital Age
DATES | 12 November 2025, 11:00, 18:00
VENUE | SOAS University of London
HOST | Korea Foundation
TOPIC | New Possibilities in the Era of Technology Convergence - Reimagining Korean Cultural Arts for the Post-Digital Age
DATES | 12 November 2025, 11:00, 18:00
VENUE | SOAS University of London
HOST | Korea Foundation
Affective Atmospheres Special Lecture & Artist Talk
DATES | 18 - 19 February, 2026
VENUE | Civic House, Glasgow, UK
HOST | Royal Institute of Philosophy, UK
The Sacred Mountain Solo Exhibition
ONGOING PROJECTS
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea | 9 April 2025
Good Morning, Mr. G-Dragon is a 2025 space media art project conceived by South Korean media artist and KAIST professor Jinjoon Lee, in collaboration with global K-pop icon G-Dragon (Kwon Ji-yong). The project combined G-Dragon’s biometric data, generative AI, sound art, projection mapping, and satellite transmission technology to send an emotionally infused audiovisual signal—based on G-Dragon’s iris and original music—into outer space via a 13-meter parabolic antenna.
Good Morning, Mr. G-Dragon, 2025.
Generative AI-based media installation with biometric data, sound composition, and satellite signal transmission.
installation view at KAIST.
installation view at KAIST.
BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou, China | 22 April 2025 - 22 April 2026
Wandering Sun in West Lake is an immersive media artwork inspired by Su Dongpo (蘇軾, 1037–1101) and his poem “Drinking at West Lake After the Rain” (饮湖上初晴后雨二首). This work reinterprets the ephemeral interplay of light and water on West Lake (西湖)—a reflection of its inherent impermanence (無常)—through the traditional handscroll (卷軸) format, transformed into a digital, time-based experience.
Installed as a public art piece in a long corridor connecting a subway station to a museum, the piece unfolds across a 2.4m × 57.6m LED screen as a digital scroll (Digital Scroll), inviting viewers to walk alongside a drifting sun, immersing themselves in its ever-changing surroundings.
Installed as a public art piece in a long corridor connecting a subway station to a museum, the piece unfolds across a 2.4m × 57.6m LED screen as a digital scroll (Digital Scroll), inviting viewers to walk alongside a drifting sun, immersing themselves in its ever-changing surroundings.
Happy New Year Awarded,
International Film Festival Rotterdam(IFFR), Rotterdam, Netherlands. | 30 January - 9 February 2025
The Rotterdam International Film Festival, which has been a leading showcase for experimental and independent film since 1972, has honored Jinjoon Lee's Happy New Year with a selection in the Art Directions programme for 2025. Happy New Year will be screened at the Kijkmodule at Rotterdam Central Station to a wide range of audiences.
"Happy New Year" is a cinematic installation that utilizes a game engine to create a fictionalized landscape. Amidst the cheerfulness of celebrating the New Year around the world between December 31, 2023 and January 1, 2024, the piece reminds us of situations around the world that are suffering from war, disaster, and climate crisis.
The work reflects on the paradoxical situation in which the positively biased virtual worlds created by today's AI technologies can make us even more blind to the darker realities of our apathy. The fictionalized utopian images in the work are reminiscent of Chaekgeori(Korean traditional still-life painting that depicts books along with various other objects) and Western Cabinet of curiosities, connecting our world of war, disaster, death, and ruin to the Buddhist Wheel of Reincarnation, where heaven and hell, birth and death, coexist.
Wandering Sun Group Exhibition, 2024
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Cheongju, Korea. | 12 September - 31 December 2024 (extended)
Wandering Sun Series by Jinjoon Lee continues the artist’s exploration of liminal spaces, further questioning how we perceive the relationship between the natural and the artificial through visual art. It shows the movement of the sun in hyper-realistic way, but the sky is not actually photographed, but rather a virtualized sky based on environmental data. The series merges two distinct identities: one as a hyper-realistic 'snapshot' and another that reveals its 'natural' beauty as a human-made creation. This unsettling paradox reminds us that, in our time, nature and technology are seamlessly intertwined, challenging conventional ideas of what is truly 'natural' or 'artificial.'
The new version, installed MMCA Cheongju, features a large 4-meter-high by 17-meter-long video panel that turns the walls and floor of museum's lobby red as the sun rises. Especially in this version, using the coordinates of Masan, his hometown, as the observation point, Lee integrates six types of data collected over a 30-year period, including sulfur dioxide concentrations. By reflecting the effects of air pollution on sunlight scattering and cloud formation, the work paradoxically presents a landscape that is both realistic and intensely poetic.
Jinjoon Lee, Wandering Sun, 2024. Single channel video installation, Unreal Engine 5, AI algorithm, NASA Earth observation data, 4 x 17m 2,6pt, 04'15"
Audible Garden Solo Exhibition, 2023
Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK. | 21 July - 13 October 2023
Audible Garden, the solo exhibition of work by new media artist Jinjoon Lee as part of a yearlong celebration of the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea and the UK. Drawing inspiration from Asian Sansui landscape painting and Korean garden philosophy, Lee has created a multisensory space that constructs a new environment whilst also deciphering the current world we inhabit. Inspirited by Lee’s residency at Hertz lab of the ZKM in Germany, Audible Garden will run from 21 July - 13 October 2023 at the KCCUK exhibition space. See the VIDEO
Audible Garden, the solo exhibition of work by new media artist Jinjoon Lee as part of a yearlong celebration of the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea and the UK. Drawing inspiration from Asian Sansui landscape painting and Korean garden philosophy, Lee has created a multisensory space that constructs a new environment whilst also deciphering the current world we inhabit. Inspirited by Lee’s residency at Hertz lab of the ZKM in Germany, Audible Garden will run from 21 July - 13 October 2023 at the KCCUK exhibition space. See the VIDEO
Jinjoon Lee, Audible Garden, 2023. Site-specific wall painting.
Photo by Dan Weill, Courtesy of the KCCUK
PUBLICATION
TITLE | NOWHERE IN SOMEWHERE
AUTHOR | Jinjoon Lee
PUBLISHER | marmmo press
PUBLICATION DATE | 26 DEC, 2023
ISBN | 979-11-985065-2-8
At the forefront of contemporary art, Korean new media artist Jinjoon Lee has published a collection of works that culminates two decades of work. This book traces Lee's activities over the past two decades, from 2003 to 2023, when he joined the Department of Sculpture at the Seoul National University of Fine Arts, moving from artist, futurist, and observer of technology to creative director in the field. Since his first solo exhibition, Art Theatre - Role Play, at ARKO Art Centre in 2007, Lee has presented exhibitions and performances in more than 50 countries around the world. This book focuses on seven projects and works that are considered to be his signature works, from his first solo exhibition Art Theatre - Role Play to his public media sculpture THEY installed at Digital Media City (DMC) in Seoul in 2010, to his solo exhibition Audible Garden held in the centre of London in July 2023.
jinjoonleestudio@gmail.com