Image: Secession Building, London
Mire Lee’s immersive installation ‘The Heart of My Machine is Golden Lead’ is on view at the Secession in Vienna from 26 June to 26 August 2026. The exhibition takes over the institution’s space with a slowly active machine environment built from a large cement mixer, a slanted wall, and a viscous substance that spreads across the floor and down the barrier, where crusts are expected to accumulate over the course of the show.
According to the Secession, the work centers on the tension between mechanical operation and bodily fragility. Lee’s practice is described by the institution as one that often uses leaky machines and quasi-organic structures that appear to drip and decay. In this installation, the cement mixer remains partly hidden behind the partition, turning sluggishly in the background while emitting a low, continuous sound like a monotone pulse. The image is not of polished technology, but of a machine whose body seems opened up and exposed.
The exhibition page emphasizes how the installation engages the room as a physical and sensory field. The air is described as thick and tense, while the previously pristine terrazzo floor shows traces of the fluid material. A network of PVC pipes runs through the space like a circulatory system, pumping a liquid solution that includes iron oxide, brass powder and sawdust. The mixer’s spiral blade agitates the red substance, and metallic flecks can occasionally be seen on its surface. The ceiling of the exhibition room has also been opened up, with the glass panels removed so that natural light can enter.
Lee’s work is presented in relation to material excess, resistance and decay, with the Secession noting that her “fabrikähnliche” scenarios make matter seem unstable and visceral. The exhibition text also connects the installation to Gustav Klimt’s ‘Beethovenfries’, bringing ornamental language into contact with industrial heat, toxicity and sediment. In one section, old advertising banners from earlier Secession exhibitions reappear in the back of the room, overlaid with word fragments covered in brass foil and markings coated with lead solder.
The Secession says ‘The Heart of My Machine is Golden Lead’ is being shown simultaneously in Vienna and at the Korea Cultural Center Vienna, where the parallel exhibition ‘Women I loved 내가 사랑한 여자들’ presents a selection of the artist’s film works. The two parts of the project are therefore being presented as a single solo exhibition across different locations, rather than as one display contained in a single venue.
The institution also notes that fragments from the Secession presentation will later become part of a site-specific work at Oude Kerk in Amsterdam in 2026. Lee, who was born in 1988 in Seoul and lives in Amsterdam and Seoul, is included in a program curated by Haris Giannouras and programmed by the Secession board. A publication accompanies the exhibition and can be downloaded free of charge or purchased in the shop.
