In the relatively
short span of just over a decade, Lee Bul
has developed a body of work that has had
significant repercussions in contemporary
global art practices and brought her growing
international recognition. Through complex
and varied materials, conceptual approaches,
and expressive forms, her work to date -including
the norae-bang (or "Karaoke capsule"
project in the present exhibition - has
explored how the discourses of gender and
sexuality operate not only in aesthetic
creation but in other systems of cultural
and social production. One of Lee's primary
concerns is the issue of gender as it relates
to the body and the Other, and in particular,
how it functions in the context of the various
existing dichotomies of production and re-production,
such as East/West, high/low, center/periphery,
natural/artificial, and image/non-image.
Unconstrained by genre or medium, and moving
freely between life and art, her work is
by turns clever, ironic, moving, and terrifying,
but always provocative in its deconstruction
and subversion of conventional ideas and
perceptions. Though the varied nature of
her production resists easy categorization,
one could make a case for an affinity with
conceptual art, given the emphasis in her
work on the role and function of language,
visual and otherwise. Her work may be broadly
divided into three stages: the early performances
in which the artist's body was the primary
medium and subject; her "soft sculpture"
pieces, some of which were worn in performance;
and the recent series of cyborg sculptures.
It should be noted, however, that this roughly
chronological approach is mainly an expedient
used here for the purpose of a critical
overview. From the late '80s to the early
'90s, around the time when Lee began her
career, contemporary Korean art was beginning
to assimilate postmodernist theories adopted
from the West. At the same time, a new sensibility
shaped by a light, kitschy, sensational
youth culture (itself heavily influenced
by elements of Japanese pop culture) began
to emerge amidst a "bubble economy"
and material abundance. Blurring the line
between the "pure" and the "commercial,"
this new sensibility, along with a sense
of fin-de-siécle confusion, began
to prevail in the production of new art.
It was against this background that Lee
made her artistic debut with a series of
provocative performances that established
her reputation as an enfant terrible. The
primary medium of these audacious and often
confrontational pieces was the artist's
own body, sometimes shown naked. With the
performances, she sought to expand the limits
of conventional sculpture, to rebel against
modernist orthodoxies, and to question the
phallocentric sociopolitical structure that
had been reinforced by a succession of military
governments in recent Korean history. Also,
it was through her performances exploring
the anxieties of the body and the implacability
of primal desires that Lee's "soft
sculptures" - a work that she would
continue and expand upon - first came to
widespread notice. Handcrafted by the artist
from foam rubber, sponge, and fabric, these
visually striking pieces could be exhibited
on their own as art objects. For their best
effect, however, they called for the presence
and movement of the human body. Adorned
with cheap, glittering sequins and sprouting
appendages resembling limbs, horns, or tails,
the soft sculptures both exaggerated and
distorted the wearer's body. But despite
their outlandish, monstrous appearance,
they seemed to possess a strange sexual
allure. And it is perhaps this ambiguous
grotesque/erotic element which made the
simple act of wearing them in public spaces
-as the artist did in a twelve-day performance
throughout Tokyo - a transgressive gesture.
From the contingent art of performance,
Lee Bul gradually moved on to installations
which, though more "object-oriented,"
were just as disquieting as her performances.
Majestic Splendor, her well-known series
of installations of real fish - decorated
with sequins, sealed in clear Mylar bags,
and typically arranged in a minimalist grid
on the gallery wall -combines the fleshy
texture of the fish with the glittering,
almost translucent, surface of the sequins
to produce a startling and strangely exquisite
effect. The work calls into question the
stability of categorical concepts and oppositional
distinctions - the natural versus the artificial,
for instance. The fish here functions as
an embodiment of the natural, which has
historically been exalted and romanticized
as a manifestation of the universal, the
eternal, and thus privileged over the artificial,
the inauthentic. Moreover, in Christian
symbology, the fish stands for Christ and
is thus endowed with a transcendent signification;
and in minhwa, a form of Korean folk art,
the motif of plump fish in a pond is a common
visual code for female fertility and generative
capacity.
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