RHEE Jaye 이재이

I am accustomed to diminishing the importance of an individual dancer’s history in the course of a staged performance. Unconsciously, it’s as if I imagine performers congealing for a moment on a stage in order to manifest the agenda of an invisible author. For dancers, especially, it is always about the body — the body as a structure capable of grace and choreographed strength. Over the last month, artist Jaye Rhee debuted a 4-channel video piece that engages the body as a minimalist structure, while emphasizing the dancers’ previous life in The Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The Flesh and the Book places these figures in a musical score of five rubber bands, flattening a three-dimensional space into an illusion of two. The bodies enact a series of choreographed gestures, who’s style and form evoke a Cunningham past — like moving archives of embodied knowledge. The Flesh and the Book, closes tomorrow at Doosan Gallery, 533 West 25th St. in New York.

Last week in Chelsea, NY, Doosan Gallery – a non-profit space dedicated to exhibiting Korean contemporary art – debuted new work by their latest artist-in-residence Jaye Rhee. The Seoul-born , New York basedartist is mostly known for her work in video, photography, and elements of performance. For her exhibition at Doosan, The Flesh and The Book, these disciplines converge in the form of a meticulously edited four channel video installation featuring an unlikely performance by some of the original dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

New York Review