Lee Lee Nam is an artist working in the post-modernist tradition yet capable of creating new expressive forms. In Korean Eight Fold Scene (Lot 2538), Lee appropriates the canonical flower-and-bird styles and landscapes of past periods of art history, presenting them anew in digitized, electronic form with modern media and technology. But the flowers, birds, brooks, and groves in his work are no longer motionless: bamboo leaves sway gracefully in the breeze; a small boat moored at lakeside gently rocks, sending out ripples; a cat lazily flicks its tail; and there is the carefree flight of a bird through the trees. The frozen, flat spaces of these traditional flower-and-bird and landscape subjects become three-dimensional, living spaces, spaces where motion occurs and time passes, almost as in video clips. Through Lee's use of electronic media, traditional painting and calligraphy reappear in a modern setting, transforming the aesthetic experience we normally associate with them. Electronic media are typically viewed as contemporary, mass audience technologies, whereas painting and calligraphy are often categorized as classical art, only for the elite. This artist deliberately merges the two, leading us beyond these different media, breaking down artificial divisions and returning us to the fundamental perception of beauty that best reaches the heart. In particular he lets us see with new eyes how modern technology can serve as a creative force to reshape and redefine these canonical works. The creative spirit and implications behind these works are reminiscent of Nam June Paik, from an earlier generation of Korean artists, who also reproduced traditional elements in electronic form and whose immense creativity urged the viewer to connect tradition with modernity and technology with art. Within their different cultural environments, these two generations of artists have found similar cultural themes but have each produced modes of expression uniquely their own.

Lee Lee Nam's Korean Eight Fold Scene is an installation of eight television screens. Installed in the form of a traditional screen painting, the work leads viewers toward the consideration of ideas at another level: the radical difference between the visual experiences of the past and the present, and the concomitant issues of how each different era generates the existential circumstances and the zeitgeist unique to itself. Compared with screen paintings, watching TV is faster: images shift with tremendous speed and exciting sounds and visuals capture our eyes and ears, symbolizing the high efficiency and pace of modern life and reflecting the demands of our modern psyches for the most information in the shortest amount of time. This is precisely opposite to the appeal of traditional screen painting, which asks viewers to reflect calmly, to appreciate the scene and let their hearts expand into the natural world it presents. Though it is a quiet, tranquil experience, it does ask the viewer to take in new scenes while walking slowly forward; it stimulates the viewer's visual and tactile senses, and even their bodily awareness, creating a tranquil state of quiet contemplation of the object. Through his apposition of the radically different experiences of TV and screen painting, Lee Lee Nam urges us to contemplate the differences between these modes of viewing, and the ways in which they influence and even control our interpretation of what we observe. At the same time, we are encouraged to carefully ponder traditional values and tighten our hold on the kind of traditional aesthetic experiences that seem to be slipping from our grasp.