'The shape-shifting art of Lee Bul’
By Louise Benson
(...) One of the foremost South Korean artists of her generation, Lee has spent almost five decades drawing into question the easy categorisations that divide us. In her large-scale sculptures, paintings and installations, she rails against a world that is often carved up into black-and-white distinctions, not only between east and west but between the natural and the artificial, beauty and horror, the old and new.
At times, she has been perceived as an outsider in her home country and abroad. “When I was in my 20s, I was often asked how I could be referencing western art if I was a Korean artist,” she says. “Some people even simply and rudely told me that my work is not Korean, but this shows how easily we identify certain things in such a simplistic way.”
A new series of paintings, titled Perdu in reference to Marcel Proust’s À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, shimmer with tiny fragments resembling mother of pearl. To create these, Lee lays wooden panels on the floor before applying layers of paint. These are then sanded away to reveal previous colours from below, in a technique that Lee likens to excavation and archaeology.
The resultant paintings are suggestive of everything from an aerial view of a landscape to cellular imagery from inside the human body. Some resemble the sensuous curve of a nude figure. “Some people interpret them as female, but that is just based on an existing idea of how they should look,” she says. “We are now at a stage in society where it’s really ambiguous and difficult to distinguish between male and female. I am developing more towards this direction.”
As a female artist emerging within a deeply patriarchal society in South Korea, Lee has consistently defied gender norms. During the late 80s, she hung her naked body upside down at a gallery in protest at the country’s abortion ban. (...) It was a radical, shocking image echoed by her late-90s Cyborg series, in which mutilated, futuristic female bodies were suspended above the ground, part woman and part machine.
Lee reveals she has never described herself as an artist, preferring to call herself an engineer. Constantly shape-shifting, she refuses to be labelled, in life as in her work. “I want to raise the question of whether we should care about naming, which will only make us behave a certain way or fulfil the expectation to be something. This can influence not only our imagination but the formation of our own future.”
Lee Bul, Perdu CLVIII, Mother of pearl, acrylic paint on wooden base panel, stainless steel frame, 163 x 113 x 6,5 cm, 2023. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol © Lee Bul. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London.
Perdu CLVIII, 2023
The newest Perdu works speak to Lee’s interest in uncovering the artist’s process of production. “I feel that when an image represents the body or another figure, it can often overshadow the production method or the material used because the image itself is too strong. I thought that if I made my images more abstract, I could divide these different forces in a more balanced way.” (...)
Lee Bul, Perdu CXVII, Mother of pearl, acrylic paint on wooden base panel, stainless steel frame, 189,5 x 83,3 x 6,6 cm, 2021. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol © Lee Bul. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London.
Perdu CXVII, 2021
This painting imagines the landscape of an open plain in aerial view, with the pink lines of flight paths tracing journeys near and far. The panels can be combined in different variations. “In several of my recent Perdu pieces, I have not chosen which side should be displayed up or down, and this can be decided by anyone.” (...)
