The Poetics of Deconstruction – Unbinding the Immutable

In an age defined by instability, humanity paradoxically seeks refuge in what appears immutable. Photographs preserved in historical stillness, canonical texts carried across centuries, garments shaped by ritual and repetition — these forms promise permanence. Lee Jihyun does not accept that promise at face value. His inquiry is precise: is what we believe to be enduring truly essential, or merely the inertia of inherited form? 

In his practice, deconstruction is not destruction. It is liberation. 

It is a performative unveiling — the removal of hardened surfaces so that the work may speak beyond imposed authority. 

Lee selects photographs, garments, sacred texts. He cuts, separates, dismantles, and disassembles them. The gesture is not violent but deliberate. It unfolds through patience and control. Books become unreadable. Clothes become unwearable. Images lose their coherence. Stripped of function, these objects remain as matter — and in that state, they articulate more than before. 

His work moves from image to object, from narrative to residue. 

In that shift, authority trembles and essence emerges. 

Texts such as the Bible or Romeo and Juliet stand as fortresses of cultural consensus — stabilized through centuries of repetition. Yet repetition often suspends thought. By physically fragmenting these symbolic structures, Lee exposes the layers of belief embedded within them. Between torn sentences and separated fibers, an undefined sensibility surfaces. The gesture is not provocation; it is inquiry. 

His material language recalls the gravity of Anselm Kiefer and the spatial incision of Lucio Fontana, yet his approach remains distinct. Monumentality gives way to restraint. Explosion yields to immersion. His process is closer to a rite than to an intervention. Through repetition and incision, time accumulates. Deconstruction becomes duration rather than event. 

Fragments respond to air and light. 

Fibers sway. Paper fractures. Light inhabits the fissures. 

The scene is not theatrical. It is profound. 

His work does not overwhelm the viewer; it suspends them. 

Where seamless narrative dissolves, contemplation begins. 

What was assumed immutable reveals its fragility. 

What was accepted as truth becomes newly visible. 

Lee Jihyun’s practice erases the visible to reveal the unseen. 

His deconstruction is not negation, but awakening. 

His silence is not absence, but potential. 

The immutable may have been a restraint. 

And in the moment it loosens, 

freedom quietly unfolds.