Jeewi Lee & Phillip C. Reiner, Fragment: Tidal Memory_Dadaepo 25_74, 2025, sand, steel, urethane, EPS, 169 × 179.9 × 111.5 cm.
Jeewi Lee & Phillip C. Reiner, Fragments: Tidal Memories, 2025, sand, steel, urethane, EPS.
Fragments : Tidal Memories is based on grains of sand collected at Dadaepo Beach and two other sites, the coast of Mallorca and the beach of New York. From countless grains, one was selected, magnified more than a thousandfold through high-precision technology, and realized as a monumental form.
Berlin-based Korean artist Jeewi Lee and German researcher Philip C. Reiner share a curiosity for what is hidden in everyday life. Their collaboration moves between the material and the digital, the ancient and the contemporary. For 2025 Sea Art Festival, they took inspiration from Dadaepo, where river and sea constantly reshape the land and where unusually fine sand is found. The work explores the paradox of sand: one of Earth’s oldest and most abundant resources, yet increasingly scarce due to overuse. Each grain carries the traces of long geological time, shaped by wind, water, and land. Seen this way, a single particle becomes a microcosmic archive of the Earth’s memory.
The artists invite us to see sand, so easily overlooked, as a witness to the deep history of our planet.
