Strassenquer-schnitt

Jeewi Lee began extending her artistic practice to the outdoor space in “Straßenquer- schnitt” (Road Cross Section) in 2015. This work focuses on a recurrent theme in the artist’s oeuvre: it preserves traces and can be read as examination of their narrative quali- ty. For “Straßenquerschnitt,” an 18-meter-long and 4-meter-wide gray carpet was rolled out on the four-lane Leipziger Straße, one of Berlin’s main traffic arteries. Lee stopped the ac- tion when she declared the image on the carpet resulting from the tires of the cars running over it to be complete. The resulting work conforms to the conventions of painting: the car- pet serves as a canvas, while the cars acted as autonomous painting tools. “Straßenquer- schnitt,” in this sense, is not an abstract image, but a direct fixation and portrayal of the quotidian movements that occurred at this specific moment on this defined site.

Text: Lydia Korndörfer, Marie Theresa Krauss