Sang-Eun LEE

“My work explores the abstract concept of time by visualizing it through layered forms. I

consider the time each person spends in daily life as a single unit—whether a day, a year, or
another measure—which I then restructure and represent as individual or stacked layers.”
Each unit, fragment, or rectangular frame in her work becomes a symbolic marker of time: a day (1,440 minutes), a year (365 days), or a personal moment. These stacked and layered
forms reflect not only the accumulation of lived experience, but also the complex and
overlapping nature of time itself. Her work thus becomes a visual storytelling—of lives
shaped and marked by the invisible, yet deeply felt, passage of time.

Time is the most immediate experience of consciousness, and yet the most mysterious.
Even theoretical physicists struggle to define it: is it a dimension, like space, or something
else entirely? In her lecture on the invention of clocks, Marie-Cécile Manes-Murphy reflects:

“Time is no longer cyclical, imprecise, or inconsistent. It has become fluid, flowing inexorably with mathematical regularity. The foundations of modern physics are now laid.”
But is time truly fluid? If so, it would have a velocity—1 second per second, a unitless
number, ONE. Relativistic physicists propose that we, along with all objects in the universe,
except light or photons, move at the speed of light through the time dimension: a movement perpendicular to spatial dimensions. Meanwhile, quantum physicists suggest that time may not be fluid at all, but granular, divided into indivisible yet fuzzy fragments: infinitesimal, but not zero.

Sang Eun LEE’s vision is aligned with both scientific and emotional truths. Time is not
continuous: it is experienced in units: seconds, days, years, or moments. These are
measured by clocks, but also felt by lovers, mourned by the grieving, and treasured by the
nostalgic. Sang Eun LEE renders time in both structured and hazy forms—some squares
precise like clock hours, others blurred like memory, as if infused with the “fuzziness” of
quantum reality.

Does time have a colour? Certainly. In perception and memory, every moment holds its own
hue. A pale pink might recall a childhood morning; a deep blue, a contemplative night; a
golden yellow, the warmth of joy; and a faded grey, the sorrow of a forgotten hour. Time, in
this sense, is not linear but chromatic. It leaves traces on our inner canvas, where moments
blend like pigments—vibrant or muted, warm or cold, depending on the light in which we
remember them.

Through colour, Sang Eun LEE gives form to the formless. She makes the invisible visible,
painting not just the passage of time, but the emotional spectrum it leaves in its wake. Sang Eun LEE’s is Chromochrone.

Sang Eun LEE explores time as a pictorial material: layers, fragments, strata… Each square
or overlay represents a moment, a memory, or an entire year. Time becomes colour, form,
and sensation. Through sharp or blurred juxtapositions, she evokes the rhythm of lived
experience, the emotions of memory, and the abstraction of time itself. A deeply sensitive
and mental painting, where time is measured not in seconds, but in shades.