PHENOTYPE

KI LEE Inaugural Collection (2017) 

<PHENOTYPE> presents the findings of artist Ki Chan Lee’s artistic investigations through his newly acquired vocabulary as a bag designer. The designs included in KI LEE’s first collection offers a glimpse into the brand’s DNA and a blueprint for future developments. 

Inspired by the biologist D’arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form, and the mathematician Hermann Weil’d Symmetry, <Phenotype> is a teleological examination of a bag. By applying the theories of Thompson and Weil regarding the developments of organic and inorganic structures in the natural world, KI LEE imagines bags as autonomous entities sharing our lived experience. If it is the genetic and environment factors that determine the forms and functions of the natural world, <PHENOTYPE> presents a group of bags whose form and function rely on their Poetic Utility.