Lee Bul’s Striking Tessellated Figures Take a Stand Outside the Met The Met's fifth facade instalment by Lee Bul
By Vittoria Benzine
As of this month, four otherworldly sculptures by South Korea’s most infamous artist watch over Fifth Avenue from the niches along the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s forward-facing exterior, marking the first major U.S. showcase by Lee Bul in over 20 years. Their silhouettes both contradict and complement the Met’s limestone Beaux-Arts facade, enticing viewers to contemplate the catch-22 of progress.
“I can’t really speak for other institutions,” said Lesley Ma, the Met’s first-ever curator of Asian Art, who helped oversee Lee’s commission, Long Tail Halo. “But the reason that we chose her is that she’s one of the most celebrated sculptors of her generation.”
“Later, I found out that she knew about the facade commission,” Ma added, “and was hoping that she would be invited one day.”
Lee, 60, achieved notoriety during her twenties for performances like Sorry for suffering (1989) and Abortion (1990), wherein she traipsed Seoul in a tentacled costume and hung from the ceiling of Dongsoong Art Center discussing her own terminated pregnancy, respectively. The latter stunt only concluded after attendees insisted Lee be taken down from her harness, which was causing her obvious pain.
From there, Lee moved into sculptures, like Majestic Splendor—a frequently re-staged installation of bagged fish that filled the MoMA with a putrid odor in 1997 debut—and her Cyborgs of the same decade, which explored the tensions between people and technology through partial, pristine, sexy half robots made from silicone, polyurethane, and paint.
“In the mid 2010s she kind of shifted her perspective into the larger narration of history,” Ma noted. Lee’s sculptures exploded into her now-recognizable style of meticulous, many-faceted amalgamations. Her “Secret Sharer” series, which translates the shape of man’s cross-cultural best friend through this approach, debuted at her 2011 retrospective in Tokyo. Canines surface twice in her latest commission for the Met, too.
Long Tail Halo is the fifth installment in the Museum’s facade series, which Wangechi Mutu inaugurated in 2019. Lee’s edition is the first since auto company Genesis started sponsoring it. Much like Mutu and British-Guyanaese artist Hew Locke, Lee drew inspiration directly from the Met’s collection for her turn in the niches. But, instead of putting a new spin on the past or interrogating the present, Lee looks towards the future.
