BB&M presents 《Champagne Supernova》, a solo exhibition by media artist Jinjoon Lee, on view through October 18.

Borrowing its title from the iconic 1995 Oasis track, the exhibition conjures the euphoric yet melancholic symbolism of youth, fame, and disappearance. This poetic metaphor, widely echoed in pop culture, reemerged in 2003 as the name of a peculiar supernova, SN 2003fg, which defied the mass limits of standard stellar explosions—a dazzling detonation described as “bursting like champagne.”

Lee draws from this dual legacy to reflect on the paradox of contemporary existence: that our brightest moments often contain the seeds of their own rapid extinction.

In April 2025, Lee garnered international attention with Good Morning Mr. G-Dragon, a project that transmitted an AI-generated video—based on the iris data of a globally renowned K-pop artist—alongside his music into deep space. 《Champagne Supernova》 extends this trajectory, presenting the culmination of Lee’s long-standing exploration of the iris as a cosmic portal that dissolves the boundaries between the self and the universe.

At the heart of the exhibition is the eponymous work, a large-scale video installation displayed on the LED screen. Using Chain-of-Zoom (CoZ), a deep-learning-based AI super-resolution framework, Lee has extracted radial patterns from high-resolution images of irises, transforming them into abstract sequences of light and color. The iris—a unique biometric identifier—here becomes a celestial imprint, a fleeting trace of pure luminescence.

Tracing this process of transformation, the artist invites the viewer to ask: Where does the self begin and end? How finite or infinite are the memories and data that shape us?

Meanwhile, the turntable, which translates the visual traces engraved on an LP into auditory data, and the VR theater, which compels viewers to gaze at AI-sculpted strata, pose the same question on another sensory plane. Further, the hybrid collage paintings—created by dismantling dyed data landscapes—reveal a digital strangeness through surfaces that are at once artificial and biological, presenting a contemporary vanitas where “disappearance and eerie beauty” coexist in the digital age.

Such expansions of medium embody the artist’s inquiry into the connections between technology and the human under the concept of the “liminoid experience,” while showcasing his sculptural sensibility in a multidimensional way.

《Champagne Supernova》 thus metaphorically reflects the paradox of the supernova: an explosion of sublime brilliance carrying within it the seeds of its own end. Like the last flare of a dying star, the exhibition captures fleeting traces of humanity within the orbit of the digital cosmos, inviting reflection on what it means to leave behind a portrait at the precise moment of vanishing—where art and technology collide at the edge of extinction.

“Champagne Supernova”
2025.08.23 - 2025.10.18
BB&M
10, Seongbuk-ro 23-gil, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Korea