ART CITIES:London-Lee Bul

Lee Bul is considered one of the foremost women artists from Asia to emerge in the international art scene in the 1990s. Her artistic practice represents humanity’s desire for a utopian existence. It’s a desire that is doomed to failure, but it is still driven by humankind’s wanton need for the realization of impossible dreams.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hayward Gallery Archive

Lee Bul’s solo exhibition “Crashing” at Hayward Gallery in London, brings together 100 works from the late 1980s to the present day, including a new sculptural work and a site-specific commission, in order to explore the full range of her pioneering, thought-provoking and highly inventive practice. Opening with the artist’s iconic “Cyborg”, “Monster” and “Anagram” series, the exhibition features documentation of her early performances, seminal works such as “Majestic Splendor” (1991–2018), and the pivotal “Live Forever III” (2001), which acts as a bridge between her early figurative works and the later installations. Winner of the 1998 Hugo Boss Award, unveiled at MoMA New York and subsequently at Harold Szemann’s Biennale de Lyon, her pivotal decaying installation “Majestic Splendor” (1997) featured real fish decorated with sequins, beads and gold flowers in a glass display case. The transition from beauty to ugliness and life to death were central aspects of this work, while the decorative materials were, as Bul says, “Meant to interject an element of social reality into the work. They were signifiers of the dynamics of class, consumption, and production involved in a program of national economic development predicated on cheap, manual labor, usually done by women”. The “Cyborg series” (1997-2011), are tangible visualizations of the human desire for perfection and the ideal of merging machine with organism to transcend the limitations of the human body. The series is inspired by a variety of sources, including Japanese anime, mythology, Fritz Lang’s film “Metropolis” (1927) and Donna Haraway’s essay on cybernetic revolution “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985). While Haraway’s cyborg is a creature in “a post-gender world”, Lee’s sculptures instead portray the imperfection of such dreams, with mutilated bodies missing limbs and heads. Made of silicon, a material used in plastic and cosmetic surgery, these works can be seen as an allegory of mankind’s search for the perfect body, as well as a commentary on the twisted perception of women’s role in society. Expanding on the notion of mutation, Lee Bul created the “Monster” (1998-2011) and “Anagram” series (1999-2005). These biomorphic drawings and sculptures of organic structures are derived from insects and plants portraying a future evolution of species. Lee Bul first created a standing karaoke booth for her installation Gravity Greater than Velocity + Amateurs for the Korean pavilion at the 1999 Venice Biennale. The three pods of “Live Forever” continue her exploration of the karaoke phenomenon and embody the distinctive and pervasive role that karaoke has assumed within contemporary Asian culture. Lee’s use of karaoke conveys her notion that everyone’s life has a soundtrack that evokes a mixture of memory and desire that is distinctly individual, though also composed of elements of mass production and public consumption. “Live Forever III” (2001), combines imagery and songs about city life. Its fast moving video speeds down a freeway in Seoul blurring neon signs and the geometry of the urban nightscape. Accompanying songs include “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics, “Our Lip Are Sealed” by the Go-Gos, and “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. Also on display, some for the first time, are the artist’s paintings and wall pieces, along with drawings and architectural models that illuminate the way that her three-dimensional works are developed. The exhibition culminates with “Willing To Be Vulnerable – Metalized Balloon” (2015–16), a 17-metre long sculpture resembling a Hindenburg Zeppelin, suspended above a mirrored floor in Hayward’s light-filled upper galleries. This colossal sculpture, which references the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, is at once aspirational and optimistic and concerned with technological failure, fragmentation and destruction. It is accompanied by the artist’s new intricate sculptural work “Scale of Tongue” (2017–18), which makes subtle reference to the Sewol Ferry Disaster of 2014. For the exhibition, which coincides with Hayward Gallery’s 50th anniversary in July, Lee Bul treats the gallery’s architecture not as a backdrop but a collaborator. An ambitious, site-specific commission, “Weep into stones” (2017–18) responds to both the fabric of the Hayward and its radical design by draping the building in a shimmering curtain of fine steel wire, crystal and glass.

Info: Curator: Stephanie Rosenthal, and Eimear Martin, Assistant Curator: Bindi Vora, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, Duration: 30/5-19/8/18, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.southbankcentre.co.uk