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Hyungkoo Lee, trained as a sculptor at Hong-ik University (Seoul, BFA) and Yale University (New Haven, MFA), has been deeply engrossed in the subject of human body, to the extent of attempting to make a body composition out of chicken bones in his early days. Beyond representation into invention, he explores the current conflicts between mutually incompatible domains - such as reality and hypothesis, substance and image, history and fiction, science and imagination - in the so-called postmodern era. While his approach is analytic and logical, he also claims himself as an artisan-sculptor based on the belief in the value of manual labor.
Presenting such an ingenious works as The Objectuals and Animatus series since 2002, Hyungkoo Lee has drawn wide attention from the local and international art scene. The Objectuals, his early works which drastically transforms either a particular part or the entire body through optical devices, literary objectifies the non-objective world - including the human beings. Although the cold impersonal laboratory and its quasi-experimental contrivances looking like torture instruments suggest cynical and cruel objectuality, this series pursue humane wit and humor through phrenological investigation on the human body. Hyungkoo Lee proposes a provisional answer to the post-human issues, which encompass health and beauty, power and violence, sexuality and race, technology and simulation, with his own sharp and original interpretation.
The exaggerated human body in The Objectuals steps forward cartoon characters, the deformed and personified bodies which express each personality and its superpower and immortality. Hyungkoo Lee reconstructs imaginary cartoon characters into three-dimensional skeletons in a pseudo-archaeological approach, to make fiction into history. The resulted Animatus series, attributed to the tradition of Pop Art, can be seen as the epitome of simulation in providing plausible physical reference and zoological names to fictional characters.
The work of Hyungkoo Lee is regarded as the result of performances since his own body is the starting point of his work. In this sense, the staged laboratory is a kind of mobile studio for his work. As his laboratory and performance in the exhibition reveals the bases of his work and at the same time shading illusions on the boundary between art and pseudo-science, he conjures up an ironical authenticity in a quasi-pseudo mode.
