Background
Lee Bul was born on January 25, 1964, in Yeongju, South Korea.
94 Wausan-ro, Sangsu-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Lee received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Hongik University in 1987.
94 Wausan-ro, Sangsu-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Lee received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Hongik University in 1987.
Lee Bul was born on January 25, 1964, in Yeongju, South Korea.
Lee received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Hongik University in 1987.
Lee appeared on the art scene in the late 1980's with performances and sculpture. In "Cravings" (1989), Lee transformed herself into a monstrous creature, whose tentacles and externalized internal organs alluded to the anxieties of the artist and her fellow citizens, living under conditions, fraught with government censorship and civil unrest. "Abortion", also performed in 1989, showed the artist, hanging upside down from the ceiling, and generated controversy for 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.
In the 1990's, Bul explored 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 City, 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 visualization of the metamorphosis from the beautiful to the sickening, Lee highlighted the inevitable cycle of life and death.
During the period from 1996 till 1999, Bul worked on three mixed-media installations, that included photographs of the artist with large scale inflatable forms. One of these installations, named "I Need You (Monument)" (1996), combines a swelling, phallic object with a photograph of an orientalized and lingerie-clad Lee on the front. Beneath the mass lies an array of pedals for viewers to further aerate the object.
Between 1997 and 2011, Bul created cyborg sculptures. Her first artworks of this kind were "Cyborg Red" and "Cyborg Blue", produced in 1997-1998. Lee's cyborg sculptures feature beheaded anthropomorphic forms, which often lack an arm, leg, or both. Despite the fact, that these sculptures are considered female, the concept of a cyborg transcends distinctions, such as gender, race and class. The series examines the human desire for the perfect body.
In the new millennium, Lee shifted away from the body to human desires for utopia. "Mon grand récit", an ongoing series since 2005, features futuristic ruins and landscapes, comprised of small-scale railways, LED signs and architectural structures. Perched on skeletal frameworks, Lee's landscapes are a fragile mass, that could collapse in a matter of seconds - as unrealized hopes often do in utopias. At that period of time, 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.
In her most recent "Perdu" works, Lee explores the binary between the artificial and the organic, both conceptually and materially. Composed of organic and inorganic material, such as mother of pearl, velvet and acrylic paint, the artist's otherworldly visions of fragmented bodies are seemingly caught on the move, at various distances and in differing detail. For Lee Bul, these works are connected to earlier pieces, that explored corporeal and linguistic themes, such as those in her "Cyborg" (1997-2011) and "Anagram" (1999-2006) series.
Recently, Lee Bul has also turned to militarisation as a theme, perpetually linked to the human condition, one, that is almost tangential to utopia. This was best expressed in her monumental "Aubade V" (2019) sculpture, included in the 51st Venice Biennale exhibition "May You Live In Interesting Times". Constructed from repurposed steel from buildings, located in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the tower-like form flashed Morse Code and the International Code of Signals, both systems, that communicate important messages of safety or distress.
During her career, Lee has had many solo exhibitions, including those, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City (1997), the New Museum, New York City (2002), The Power Plant, Toronto (2002), the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris (2007), the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg (2013), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2014), the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015), the Vancouver Art Gallery (2015), the Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2012 and 2016), Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2018), the Hayward Gallery, London (2018) and the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia (2019).
Also, her work has been included in important group exhibitions and biennials, such as "dAPERTutto", 48th Venice Biennale (1999), "Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War", 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2007), Prospect 1: A Biennial for New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana (2008), "Burning Down the House", 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea (2014), "Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim", Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City (2015), "The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed", 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016), "X: Korean Art in the Nineties", Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2016), "Score Music for Everyone", Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea (2017) and "May You Live In Interesting Times", 58th Venice Biennale (2019).
In addition, in March 2010, the Hara Museum ARC unveiled a permanent installation by Lee Bul, entitled "A Fragmentary Anatomy of Every Setting Sun". In February 2012, Tokyo's Mori Art Museum mounted a mid-career survey exhibition, the artist's largest exhibition to date.
Currently, the artist lives and works in Seoul.
Lee Bul is one of the leading Korean artists of her generation. Despite the fact, that she works with different art media, she is best known for her monstrous sculptures, cyborgs and utopian landscapes.
During her career, Lee received several prestigious awards, including the Hugo Boss Prize, 13th Korea Seok ju Art Prize, 10th Korea Gwangju Biennale Noon Award, French Order of Arts and Ho-Am Prize in the Arts. In addition, in 1999, Bul was awarded an honorable mention at the 48th Venice Biennale for her contribution to both the Korean Pavilion and the international exhibition, curated by Harald Szeemann.
The artist's works are kept in numerous international public and private collections, including those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; M+, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Perdu XXVII
Perdu XXI
Untitled (Mekamelencolia - Velvet #12 DDRG24OC)
Untitled (Mekamelencolia - Velvet #6 DDRG10NB)
Untitled (Mekamelencolia - Velvet #5 DDRG18LM)
Untitled (Anagram Leather #8)
Untitled (Anagram Leather #6)
Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable Velvet #7 DDRG02AV)
Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable - Red Velvet #5 DDRG13RB)
Civitas Solis III10
Lee was born and reared during the period of incredible social and economic upheaval, marked by the transition to a democratic state. This political shift, experienced over her lifetime, has informed much of her work and has been expressed in various ongoing themes over the course of her career.
Lee investigates the liminal space between binaries, such as the individual and the collective, and contradictory feelings, such as isolation and claustrophobia. Her installations and sculptures explore universal themes, including the utopian desire to achieve perfection through technological advances and the dystopic suspicions and failures, that often result. Though varied in material and content, the works are united in their exploration of structural systems - from the individual body to larger architectural frameworks, that encompass cities and utopian societies.
For Lee Bul, humankind's fascination with technology ultimately refers to their preoccupations with the human body and desire to transcend flesh in pursuit of immortality. This interest often materializes in her work in the form of a cyborg - a being, that is both organic and machine - the closest thing to a human, that truly achieves this ideal. Lee Bul considers the cyborg a conceptual metaphor in its personification of social attitudes to technology, simultaneously a paragon and a monster.
