Provocative and inventive, Lee Bul (이불) is one of the leading Korean artists of her generation. Working across performance, sculpture, painting, installation and video, she is most known for her monstrous sculptures, cyborgs, and utopian landscapes. Born to dissident parents during the military dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee in South Korea, Lee emerged in the 1990s through works that channelled the emotional impact of political persecution and restrictive gender roles into visual form. Since then, the artist has investigated human desires for perfection and stability and the implications of technology in the contemporary world.
Read MoreAfter completing her studies at Hongik University in 1987, Lee Bul embarked on her career as a performance artist on the streets of Korea and Japan. Donning soft wearable sculptures that were described as 'simultaneously alluring and grotesque' by Ikon Gallery, she addressed the themes of political instability and gender roles in a then—and still—very conservative and male-dominated Korean society.
In Cravings (1989), Lee transformed herself into a monstrous creature, whose tentacles and externalised internal organs alluded to the anxieties of the artist and her fellow citizens living under conditions fraught with government censorship and civil unrest. The performance later developed into the 'Monster' (1998–2011) series, in which the wearable sculptures evolved into freestanding statues.
Abortion, also performed in 1989, showed the artist hanging upside down from the ceiling and generated controversy for Lee Bul's bold critique of Korean traditions regarding women's bodies and sexuality. Around this time, Lee also participated in the founding of Museum, an underground collective of avant-garde artists, performers and musicians in Seoul whose members are still influential in Korea today.
Lee Bul's artwork from the 1990s explores the human body in its relation to beauty, life, death, and technology. Majestic Splendor (1997)—an installation created for The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York—consisted of a decaying fish adorned with sequins, beads and flowers in a glass display case. Although the exhibition closed prematurely due to its smell, curator Harald Szeemann invited Lee to recreate it in the Lyon Biennale that same year. In a powerful visualisation of the metamorphosis from the beautiful to the sickening, Lee highlighted the inevitable cycle of life and death.
Lee Bul's iconic 'Cyborg' (1997–2011) series examines the human desire for the perfect body. Cyborg Red and Cyborg Blue, both completed in 1997 as a pair, show silicon casts of female figures based on Greco-Roman statues with machine-like body parts. Because Lee's cyborgs often appear as female, they have been regarded as a critique of the social expectation for women to have idealised bodies.
However, Lee has shown that her concerns extend to humankind at large in her karaoke installations such as Gravity Greater than Velocity (1999) and Live Forever (2002). Safely tucked in the empty karaoke capsules and pods, the human body is reduced to its sensory functions—technology may be alluring, but humans have reason to be alarmed about its advancements.
In the new millennium, Lee Bul shifted away from the body to human desires for utopia. Architectural sculptures, drawings, and installations exploring utopia form the crux of Utopia Saved (2020), the artist's solo exhibition at Manage Central Exhibition Hall, St Petersburg, that was featured in an Ocula Photolog. Among the works on view was the 'Mon grand récit' series, ongoing since 2005, which features futuristic ruins and landscapes comprised of small-scale railways, LED signs, and architectural structures. Writing for Ocula Magazine in November 2020, Stephanie Bailey noted that the exhibition 'is as much about sensing utopia's textures as it is about feeling its loss'.
Lee also began to incorporate reflective materials in her architectural installations, most notably in After Bruno Taut (Devotion to Drift) (2013)—a floating palace of crystal beads, chains and mirrors. Inspired by the futuristic ideals and works of Bruno Taut, a 20th-century German architect and the creator of the Glass Pavilion, Lee uses reflectivity to allude to utopian ideals as well as a means to examine military Korea, now several decades in the past.
In 2020, Lehmann Maupin organised the first solo exhibition of Lee Bul's paintings in Hong Kong at Hong Kong Spotlight by Art Basel. The presentation, which focused on Lee's 'Perdu' series of paintings made with a mixture of mother of pearl and paint, was included in Ocula Magazine's 'Hong Kong Spotlight: Six Artists to Watch'.
Interlude: Perdu, Lehmann Maupin, New York (2019); Lee Bul: Crash, Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2018); Lee Bul: Crashing, Hayward Gallery, London (2018); After Bruno Taut, Thaddeus Ropac, London (2017); Lee Bul, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2016); Lee Bul_: Aubade III_, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015); Lee Bul, PKM Gallery, Seoul (2015); MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2014: Lee Bul, National Museum of Art, Seoul (2014); From me, belongs to you only, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012).
Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924–Today, CaixaForum Barcelona (2020); Phantom Plane, Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019); Negotiating Boundaries, Korean Culture Centre UK, London (2019); Five Artists: Sites Encountered, M+, Hong Kong (2019); The Nature Rules: Dreaming of Earth Project, Hara Art Museum, Tokyo (2019).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
Ocula Photolog Lee Bul:
Utopia Saved Lee Bul's first solo exhibition in Russia, Utopia Saved (13 November 2020–31 January 2021), is held at St. Petersburg's Manege Central Exhibition Hall. Curated by Sunjung Kim and SooJin Lee, the show brings together environmental installations, architectural sculptures, and design drawings created since 2005.
Ocula Insight Hong Kong Spotlight: Six Artists to Watch By Stephanie Bailey, Hong Kong Hong Kong Spotlight is Art Basel's first physical presentation in 2020.
Ocula Feature Lee Bul's Utopian Encounters with the Russian Avantgarde By Stephanie Bailey, St. Petersburg Lee Bul's first solo in Russia is a first-time encounter between the artist's works and those of the Russian avantgarde.
Ocula Conversation Emi Eu: ‘We have to look at Southeast Asia as one market’ By Stephanie Bailey, Singapore STPI's Emi Eu reflects on S.E.A. Focus, an STPI project platforming artists and galleries from Southeast Asia, in the wake of Art Stage's decline in 2019.
Related Press The Body in Lee Bul’s Oeuvre: an Opaque Shell 17 February 2020, The Artro The 1990's, the last decade before the new millennium, was a turbulent period, surpassing any other turn of the century in terms of major upheavals. Large changes occurred across the board, at all levels of society.
Related Press Venice Biennale empowers women, diversity 12 May 2019, Korea Times This year, all Koreans at the Venice Biennale are women. The Korean Pavilion is curated by Kim Hyun-jin and three participating artists Jung Eun-young, also known as siren eun young jung, Jane Jin Kaisen and Nam Hwa-yeon. At the main exhibition, the works of three Korean women artists Lee Bul, Suki Seokyeong Kang and Anicka Yi are on view.
Related Press Lee Bul at Hayward Gallery, London 10 July 2018, ArtReveiw Feminist science-fiction has long played on the idea that women are liberated when humans are confronted with other intelligences.
Related Press Lee Bul’s Intergalactic Feminist World Ignites Hayward 30 May 2018, Elephant The sci-fi imagination of Lee Bul literally lit up the Hayward Gallery last night, as one of the artist’s works set on fire just an hour before the private view was scheduled to occur. It was an appropriate moment for the exhibition, as the works look as though they have smashed into the gallery from another cosmos.
Related Video & Audio 2016 artist interview series: Lee Bul 20 May 2016, Biennale of Sydney Artist Lee Bul reveals her thinking and inspiration behind her site-specific installation at the Turbine Hall of the Industrial Precinct on Cockatoo Island, titled Willing To Be Vulnerable (2015–16) for the Embassy of the Real.
