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Woojin Lee

@memoryoftheworldregister

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Artist/Designer/Educator/New York
Founding member of @departmentofcynicaldelight

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Work-in-progress.
Fragments of human-made disaster.

#departmentofcynicaldelight #newyork #fragment22 #dragon #3dpuzzle by @memoryoftheworldregister

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6 hours ago

All it takes is a quiet pause.
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#sunynewpaltz #birds #listening #noticing #🍁🍂 by @memoryoftheworldregister

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10 days ago

A Tale of Two Cities is a large scale sculptural study that was featured in our exhibition this summer, Natural Disasters & Other Fantasies @galleryondo in Seoul.

Part of a speculative body of work that imagines the commodification of severe weather imagery by the toy and game industry, it overlays post-storm debris field imagery with the logic of chess. The work draws on details from The Immortal Game, one of the most famous chess games in history, played in London, England, in 1851, and combines them with notational information from the powerful tornado that devastated London, Kentucky, in May 2025. The title is taken from the 1859 Charles Dickens novel.

The work consists of a 48 × 48 inch black felt mat printed with a chessboard grid, along with 23 rearrangeable 3D-printed debris pieces. There is no fixed arrangement for the pieces. The exhibited composition is a sample configuration that demonstrates one possible debris field, but the work itself remains open to rearrangement.

2026
Height variable, 48” x 48.5”
Felt, PLA, ECO-UV5 ink, thread
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#disasterfantasies #cynicadelight
#theimmortalgame #ataleoftwocities #debrifield by @memoryoftheworldregister

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a month ago

💙💙💙 taken in Kauai, Hawaii by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

Thank you to the incredible community of artists and writers in Seoul that have helped support us during this show.
@galleryondo
@iartnoori
@art.connecter
@pilseungsa.art
@onsil_kimwho
@sedna.lab
@space.unit_plus
@studio.kellyjang
@yeonjinkim4
@colink.images
@nohhaeyul_official
@jaeone.yi
@sung_yoon_choi
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#seoulart #artinkorea #departmentofcynicaldelight #disasterfantasies #debrisfield taken in Insadong 인사동 by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

Last day to see Natural Disasters and Other Fantasies
@galleryondo
We’ll be there this afternoon!
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#disasterfantasies #debrisfield #departmentofcynicaldelight # taken in Insadong 인사동 by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

The debris of the debris.

After removing the support structures from the 3D prints of our debris fields, we were left with a new debris field. It’s the same language but with a different dialect.

Natural Disasters and Other Fantasies ends 6/23.
@galleryondo
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#disasterfantasies #debrissimulationkit #departmentofcynicadelight #3dprintedsculpture #dreamwithinadream taken in Insadong 인사동 by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

Don’t try this at home. At least not without the proper equipment.
🫣

@galleryondo thru 6/23
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#debrissimulationkit #disasterfantasies #mydisasterfantasy #departmentofcynicaldelight #debrisfield taken in Insadong 인사동 by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

One week left to catch [전시가 한 주 남았네요]
Natural Disasters and Other Fantasies.

Where we make your disaster fantasies come true.
No disaster too big, no fantasy too small…:)
[당신의 재해구역 공상을 현실로 만드는 곳. 어떤 규모의 재난이든, 어떤 공상이든 당신과 함께합니다.]

Thru 6/23
@galleryondo in Insadong, Seoul
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#apocalypsenow
#disasterfantasies #mydisasterfantasy #departmentofcynicaldelight #debrissimulationkit taken in Insadong 인사동 by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

#millennium #천년향 #knicksin5 #gardenofmorningcalm #🇰🇷 taken in The Garden of Morning Calm by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

This Saturday, we’ll be sharing some of our process behind making this exhibition.
We’ll also have a workshop that lets you fulfill your own disaster fantasy using our Debris Simulation Kit.
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#mydisasterfantasy #debrissimulationkit taken in Insadong, Seoul, Korea. by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago

The Language of Disaster, or When Debris Speaks - Department of Cynical Delight, Gallery Ondo

The Department of Cynical Delight translates the debris of the tornado that struck the American Midwest in 2025 into an interdisciplinary visual language where meteorology, linguistics, chess theory, and design intersect. This is not a record of the disaster, but an exhibition about how to decipher it.

Department of Cynical Delight

《Natural Disasters and Other Fantasies》

Gallery Ondo · 2026.06.06 – 06.23

The moment I opened the door to Gallery Ondo and stepped inside , I paused for a moment . Green plastic pallets occupied the exhibition floor, stacked in layers , and pure white 3D print debris was scattered across a black felt mat on top of them . It was beautiful . And at the same time, it was uncomfortable . In this exhibition where two senses surged in simultaneously , from that moment on, I was already being deeply drawn into this work .

Department of Cynical Delight is a New York-based collaboration group founded by Woojin Lee (b. 1971) and Joseph Burwell (b. 1970) . Woojin Lee is a designer and former Google employee , while Joseph Burwell explores supernatural narratives through sculpture and drawing . As a married couple and artist duo, they interpret the world by actively appropriating consumerist aesthetics and corporate design processes while simultaneously subverting them . Their team name, " Department of Cynical Delight, " clearly reveals their attitude . Currently, Woojin Lee serves as a full-time professor at the State University of New Paltz , while Joseph teaches at the Pratt Institute .

Author: Lee Sang-min @iartnoori
- Senior Specialist at Art in Korea · Art Humanities Scholar
- Chairperson of the Korean Artists Support Coalition (KASC) @artist.sponsor Interdisciplinary Art Critic by @memoryoftheworldregister

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4 months ago