| I approach my work with specific formal concerns. I think about materials that create activities when they interact with light. The materials I am attracted to absorb, reflect, and transmit direct light, light filtered by film, and video projection. Through these activities, I am interested in producing excess, and thus eventually, creating a fantastic space. I am also interested in fragmentations and interruptions. Through usage of these materials, my works create a dialogue where there is a reciprocal relationship between the video projections and the sculptures. Another important formal component of my work is repetition. I often take models of a banal space and repeat them, sometimes hundreds of times, to erase the point of origin. Again through excess, the relationship between the “thing” and mimicry of the “thing” becomes complex. | 
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Catherine Y. Hsieh talks to Won Ju Lim, a Los Angeles-based artist. Her exhibition, 24 Seconds of Silence, is on view at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing from August 2 to October 26.
Won Ju Lim, Ruined Traces, 2007. Mixed media sculpture in Plexiglas, artificial plants, live plants, and video projections. Dimensions variable. Collection of Wilhelm Schuermann. Courtesy of the artist.Catherine Y. Hsieh: A large part of your work deals with lights, Plexiglas, and DVD projections. What is your artistic process?
Won Ju Lim: I approach my work with specific formal concerns. I think about materials that create activities when they interact with light. The materials I am attracted to absorb, reflect, and transmit direct light, light filtered by film, and video projection. Through these activities, I am interested in producing excess, and thus eventually, creating a fantastic space. I am also interested in fragmentations and interruptions. Through usage of these materials, my works create a dialogue where there is a reciprocal relationship between the video projections and the sculptures.
Another important formal component of my work is repetition. I often take models of a banal space and repeat them, sometimes hundreds of times, to erase the point of origin. Again through excess, the relationship between the “thing” and mimicry of the “thing” becomes complex.
CH: What inspired you to create Upside Down Huntington and Upside Down Wilmington? Are they related to each other? What is the message behind these two pieces?
WJL: I often title my work after different areas of Southern California. Huntington and Wilmington are two towns near Los Angeles where there are a great deal of industrial buildings such as oil refineries and power plants. When I am on the freeway driving through these areas, the reflection from my rear view mirror reflect a certain cinematic setting from science fiction films as they are industrial yet futuristic. Upside Down Huntington and Upside Down Wilmington was my attempt in mimicking these images I saw on my rear view mirror.
CH: In Elysian Field and Ruined Traces, you utilized lights, Plexiglas, and DVD projections to form two different worlds. Elysian Field appears to be a world of peace while Ruined Traces suggests a junglesque world of live plants and landscapes. Though with similar elements, how different was it when you created these two pieces?
WJL: The subject matters that inspired me to make these two works are very different but the formal concerns were the same.
The title Elysian Field comes from two different sources. One is from Greek Mythology, Elysium. It is a piece of paradise at the gate of Hades. It is also a part of east Los Angeles, Elysian Heights. I was interested in superimposing a mythological place with a real place.
Ruined Traces is more about failure of memory. The sculptures are of different landscape scenarios where they are fragmented in to five separate pieces. These sculptures are loosely mimicking different hillside pockets of Los Angles such as Echo Part, Silver Lake, and Mount Washington. As I drive in these areas of the city, it is impossible for me to get a continuous landscape in my mind just by the scale of the city, and thus, my memory becomes distorted and fragmented.
With both pieces I was interested in using materials that create lies and truths, deceptions and realness. For example, the sculptures from Ruined Traces are in two parts where one part of the sculpture tells an amazing lie, as it is a believable scenario of hillside neighborhood. The other side of the same sculpture reveals it as a sculpture showing the structural support and its vulnerability. With Elysian Field, the models made of Plexiglas and foam core board pretend to be a cityscape, yet they reveal themselves as materials when light is shined on them or through them.
As with most of my large-scale installations, I was interested in creating a Baroque effect with both of these pieces, where certain formal elements of Baroque Architecture are barrowed. I am interested in scale shift, creating continuity using fragmented forms and discontinuous materials, multi-perspectivalism, and excess. I want the viewers to experience the work from inside and outside simultaneously, look around and look up.
CH: In the exhibition Broken Landscape, some of your works, such as A Piece of Sun Valley and A Piece of Echo Park, are placed inside Plexiglas, creating a sense of confined taxidermy. What was the inspiration?
WJL: My decision for placing the sculpture in the Plexiglas box is about creating a distance, a way of objectifying the piece and the materials. There are two faces of the sculpture, as I described above, and by placing it in a box that references taxidermy, the side that lies and the side that tells the truth are equal. That is, one does not feel more sympathetic toward one side over the other.
CH: You deal with both installations and paintings. With which medium are you more comfortable? Why?
WJL: I do not think of works in the broken landscape series as paintings but more as sculptures where I use the paintings and silk pins as materials to create depth and difference.
CH: How important does your life in L.A. play into your work?
WJL: I think this is true for any artist living in any city, but I am certain that I would not be making the kind of work that I do if I was living elsewhere. I think the driving culture of this city plays a big role in my work. There is a certain distance in how I view the city and its landscape, as I almost never have a bodily relationship to the city. It is always through the windshield of my car. Equally, the speed in which I experience the city is also different. I also think my ability to create something fantastical out of a banal situation is something very specific to an Angeleno.
CH: What are your plans for the summer?
WJL: I am now producing a large-scale installation for the Ullens Center in Beijing, which will open just before the Olympics in August. This piece deals with the idea of fantasy architecture and cityscapes. It will have 12 sculptures and five video projections. The sculptures are of models of real and fantasy cities in multiple scales.
CH: Where do you see yourself and your work go from here in the near future?
WJL: It’s hard to say the kind of work I will be making next. I enjoy making different works, from smaller sculptures to large-scale installations with video projections. I am planning my third solo with Max Hetzler in Berlin as well as my first solo in New York with Marianne Boesky. I will be setting up a studio in Berlin next year and travel to different areas in Eastern Europe. I want to do some research and shoot footages of northeast Baroque architecture for an installation piece I have in mind.
