PRESENTATION: Lee Bul-Prints

Widely recognised as the foremost Korean artist of her generation, Lee Bul has been the subject of solo shows at major museums throughout the world. Now in the fourth decade of her career, she is a pioneering figure to a younger generation of artists influenced by the sensibility and method of her early work, the iconoclastic performances and multi-sensory installations that pushed the formal and conceptual boundaries of visual art.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: STPI Gallery Archive

The final instalment in a year-long celebration of its 21st Anniversary, STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery presents the exhibition “Lee Bul: Prints” that features over 60 works across five new series realised through thoughtful collaboration and exploration of the unlimited possibilities afforded by the STPI Creative Workshop. Using unconventional materials such as copper powder and iron filings, Lee’s new body of works challenges the parameters of printmaking, and continues to question mankind’s pursuit of a singular narrative through technocratic progress and modernist ideals. Inspired by Lee’s “Souterrain” (2012/2016) sculpture, the variations of the “Untitled – SF” series metamorphise, appearing like thousands of pieces of broken mirrors. Laboriously layered with as many as 16 layers of screen- and foil printing, the images call to mind dizzying nightscapes of a neon-lit concrete jungle where urban development and decay collide, becoming a ruin of fractured time-space. A two-dimensional reincarnation of her iconic female cyborg sculptures, “Untitled – CC” continues to examine mankind’s desire to attain perfection through technology. Screenprinted with copper powder, the bizarre-shaped silhouettes oxidise, producing a range of patina effects – each print similar but never alike, as if another intrusion into the idea of seamless utopic conditions. More highlights include the “Untitled – SI” series and “Untitled – PI” series, which share the same image provenance: a collage of explosions and mushroom clouds across a hellish landscape, created during her residency. The pastel softness and candy colors of “Untitled – PI” appears almost utopic at first, but reveals its unsettling dystopic reality upon closer observation. On the other hand, “”Untitled – SI” plays strategically with iron filings that rust over time, emphasising the decaying, unrealised dreams of the grand narrative. In the exhibition Lee Bul navigates the convergence of art, science and technology with a counter-intuitive sense of innovation, expressing their post-modern tensions through traditional print techniques and the paper medium. Deeply rooted in history, these tools and expert knowledge stand in the STPI Creative Workshop today as emblems of a different time, but also symbols of progress by the workshop team that empower artists in residency to push beyond the boundaries to discover new possibilities. Born in South Korea in 1964, Lee Bul initially studied sculpture, but quickly extended her practice to various media: in the late 1980s she began creating voluminous forms that were often paired with performances. Some of these sculptures, with stuffed appendages and extensions, were worn in performances in the streets and other public spaces, in representations of the body as a mutable, artificial, and sometimes monstrous construct. The artist’s interest in the human form, simultaneously a body as well as a social entity, continued into the late 1990s when these themes were developed in her “Cyborgs” and “Anagrams” series, sculptures made of fantastical and twisted tentacle-like limbs or baroque bio-mechanical forms. These creations expand the idea of the physical body to include new technologies that redraw the frontiers of human existence, where the borders between reality, science, and fiction are intentionally left up to individual interpretation. Lee Bul gladly combines sound, video, and solid objects that are a cross between sculpture and design, according to her artistic needs. While Lee Bul allows herself to go to great lengths to imagine an improved world in some of her works, thereby sending a positive message, other sculptures—despite their magnificent lightness of form, a common thread throughout the project—are charged with allusions to brutal events and figures in Korean history. “Thaw (Takaki Masao)” (2007) is a sort of ice sarcophagus for the military dictator Park Chung-Hee, responsible for South Korea’s brusque modernization between 1961 and 1979. “Heaven and Earth” (2007), a sculpture reminiscent of a bathtub that evokes the human figure due to its size, supports a stylized representation of Baekdu Mountain, the mythical birthplace of the Korean nation, on its edges. Lee’s more recent works have similarly dual concerns; at once forward-looking yet retrospective, seductive but suggestive of ruin. Sculptures suspended like chandeliers, elaborate assemblages that glimmer with crystal beads and chains and mirrors, poignantly evoke castles in the air. The sculptures reflect utopian architectural schemes of the early 20th century as well as architectural images of totalitarianism from Lee’s experiences of military Korea.

Photo: Lee Bul, Untitled – SFLB, 2023, Screenprint and foiling on paper, edition 1 of 4, 3 of 4, 81 x 108 cm, 31 7/8 x 42 1/2 inches, 87.8 x 114.8 x 4.5 cm (incl frame), 34 9/16 x 45 3/16 x 1 3/4 inches (incl frame), Courtesy STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery

Info: Curator: Xiaoyu Weng, STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, 41 Robertson Quay, Singapore, Duration: 4/11-23/12/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-19:00, Sun 11:00-17:00, www.stpi.com.sg/