2022
Dimensions: 9.25 x 13 inches
Pages: 142
Text in English
ISBN: 978-3-00-071522-8
Editor: Agnes Gryczkowska
Assistant Editor: Samuel Staples
Graphic Design: STUDIO Anne Buttner
Authors: Charlie Fox, Agnes Gryczkowska, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and McKenzie Wark
Published by: Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin and Tina Kim Gallery, New York
Supported by Tina Kim Gallery, New York
Printing and Binding: Gutenberg Beuys Feindruckerei
The exhibition catalogue “Mire Lee & HR Giger”, accompanies the two-artist exhibition curated
by Agnes Gryzkowska, bringing together the work of Korean-born Netherlands-based artist Mire
Lee and the late Swiss artist HR Giger, at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin between
September 2021 and January 2022.
The catalogue, designed by German-based graphic design firm Studio Anne Büttner, features a
curatorial essay by Agnes Gryzkowska, two interviews with the artists, Mire Lee and HR
Giger in dialogue with Hans Ulrich Obrist, and critical essays by McKenzie Wark and Charlie Fox.
HR Giger (1940-2014), born in Chur, Switzerland, was a painter, sculptor and designer known for
his influential, dark Surrealist Gesamtkunstwerk. During a career that spanned more than five
decades, Giger was a witness to the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, rapid technological progress,
the fast-growing destruction of the planet, and the sexual revolution – all of which informed his
work and resulted in the creation of an iconic mythology for a nightmarish future. Giger intertwined
imagery of birth, sex, ‘biomechanical’ creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes and death within his ink
drawings, oil and airbrush paintings, sculptures, and furniture. He rose to prominence
internationally after the creation of the Xenomorph – the alien species in Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’
movies – which won him an Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects.
Mire Lee (b. 1988) is a Seoul-born, Amsterdam-based artist, known for her visceral kinetic
sculptures and quasi-alchemical motorised installations. Her work explores the subjects of fetishes,
erotic desires, feminism and anxieties of the modern world. Lee’s complex arrangements and haptic
structures, composed of silicone, latex, PVC tubes, glycerine, machinery, metal and concrete inhabit
ambiguous, abject-filled zones. Sexuality, corporeality and technology are bound together creating
tensions between contrasting affects, such as seduction and repulsion, love and hate, affection and
violence, submissiveness and dominance, birth and decay.
Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin
18 September 2021 – 16 January 2022
Curated by:
Agnes Gryczkowska