Lee Bul Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable – Velvet #11), 2020

Untitled (Willing to be Vulnerable) Velvet Collage (2020) forms part of Lee Bul’s recent series of silk and velvet paintings, in which the artist creates ethereal abstract forms using organic materials – including mother of pearl – to create intricate, shimmering constellations. These works reflect Lee’s ongoing interest in experimentation with organic materials that evoke biological processes and the human body: ‘Velvet, silk, and mother-of-pearl [are of interest] because they remind me of organisms. Velvet was first developed to be used in place of hair and fur, but it is made with silk [which] is made from the discharge of silkworms, so it comes from the inside. Mother-of-pearl may look like a hard shell, but it is really an organ, the inside of shellfish, created when shellfish try to heal a wound. Materials that are related to organisms, that come from the inside out, interest me.’