Black steel sculpture

Escape Artist

More like a vision than an object; a dream not yet material, partially existing in the future.

I was rapt from the start, fascinated. Some years ago, I came across a photo of a 1989 performance piece called Abortion: she dangled from rafters for two hours, talking about her experience of the procedure. She was tied in ropes, nude, and licking a lollipop in 1989. Abortion wasn’t decriminalized in South Korea until 2021. I’m also Korean, and though I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, my own body feels so boxed in by fixed, longstanding rules about what a Korean woman can or can’t do that I was and am astonished, utterly delighted by her daring.

Woman standing on the edge of the sidewalk, weaing a tranditional asian costume.

Lee Bul (South Korean, b. 1964). Sorry for suffering—You think I’m a puppy on a picnic?, 1990. 12-day performance, Gimpo Airport, Narita Airport, Downtown Tokyo, Tokiwaza Theater, Tokyo. © Lee Bul. Courtesy of the artist.

In the second example I saw of her work, from a 1990 performance piece, she donned a large, exuberantly orange-red costume, its shape evoking a flopping monster. Photos of this fantastical performance show her flaunting through streets in Tokyo while men in suits stare, their faces troubled, bewildered. I laughed, thrilled, as I read this second piece’s title: Sorry for suffering—You think I’m a puppy on a picnic?. No, she was not a puppy. But who on earth was this woman?

She was Lee Bul, now sixty years old, one of Korea’s foremost sculptors and artists; however, from those first performance pieces onward, Lee has resisted categorization. She’s said that she prefers to be thought of as an engineer, not an artist. Notwithstanding the work she’s done challenging notions about women’s and feminine bodies—and despite the undeniably groundbreaking nature of her art and stature in a country with gender inequality so entrenched that women working paid jobs earn, on average, thirty percent less than men—she doesn’t think of herself as a feminist artist. She was drawn to performance art because she “found it, in some ways, an oppositional practice, something that defied categorization and containment.”

Composite image of an array of fish on display

Lee Bul (South Korean, b. 1964). Majestic Splendor, 1997. Fish, sequins, potassium permanganate, mylar bags, 360 x 410 cm as installed. Installation view, Projects 57: Bul Lee/Chie Matsui, Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Lee Bul. Courtesy of the artist.

When that sense of freedom diminished for Lee, she switched disciplines, moving toward sculpture instead. But there, again, she pushed against ideas of what art could be. In 1997, Lee exhibited Majestic Splendor at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an installation of dead fish adorned with sequins, shut in clear vinyl bags, and displayed on a wall. In 2018, as part of a major exhibition of Lee’s work at London’s Hayward Gallery, the fish of Majestic Splendor were placed in an oxidizing agent, potassium permanganate. The compound is odor-neutralizing; it also turned the bags flammable. A small fire broke out, delaying the show. The fish, it was reported, had exploded.

Outside photos of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Installation view of Lee Bul’s 2024 Genesis Facade Commission, Long Tail Halo (2024)

I was thinking of all this—and of how, over the years, her work has changed—as I walked to The Metropolitan Museum of Art last September, looking toward its façade. Lee Bul, the fifth artist invited to take part in the Museum’s façade commission, filled its four large niches with sculptures on view for a year, visible to anyone passing by. The paired outer sculptures first caught my attention: sparkling, intricately faceted, initially abstract-seeming figures that arc forward and down. The two inside sculptures are more human—one black, one whitish—bringing to mind the kinds of classical figures one might expect to see at The Met entrance, their bodies branching off with what could be wings or legs posed in a contrapposto.

Two statuesque figures on the left a black, and on the white rustic white, standing tall outside of building structure.

Left: Lee Bul (South Korean, b. 1964). Long Tail Halo: CTCS #1, 2024. Stainless steel, ethylene-vinyl acetate, carbon fiber, paint, polyurethane, 275(h) x 127(w) x 162(d) cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, © Lee Bul. Courtesy of the Artist Right: Lee Bul (South Korean, b. 1964). Long Tail Halo: CTCS #2, 2024. Stainless steel, ethylene-vinyl acetate, carbon fiber, paint, polyurethane, 268(h) x 127(w) x 111(d) cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, © Lee Bul. Courtesy of the Artist

But as I climbed the stairs, what had felt recognizable fractured, the body parts divided in ambiguous fragments, the wings perhaps armor or something else entirely. Meanwhile, up close, the abstract sculptures at the edges resolved into canine figures. Dogs, it turned out, inspired by Jindos, a revered Korean breed Lee’s lived with for years. Getting even closer, the dogs metamorphosed again, swerving toward the abstract as their facets, prismatic with sunlight, pulled in my attention.

Two uniquely designed crystal sculptures

Left: Lee Bul (South Korean, b. 1964). Long Tail Halo: The Secret Sharer II, 2024. Stainless steel, polycarbonate, acrylic, polyurethane, dimensions variable Part A (top): 154(h) x 80(w) x 163(d) cm - Upper Part B (bottom): 217(h) x 95(w) x 245(d) cm - Lower. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, © Lee Bul. Courtesy of the Artist Right: Lee Bul (South Korean, b. 1964). Long Tail Halo: The Secret Sharer III, 2024. Stainless steel, polycarbonate, acrylic, polyurethane, dimensions variable Part A (top): 154(h) x 80(w) x 163(d) cm - Upper Part B (bottom): 217(h) x 95(w) x 245(d) cm - Lower. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, © Lee Bul. Courtesy of the Artist

I studied the sculptures from the front and the sides. I got as close as I could, then walked back down the stairs to see them from a distance, watching the figures shape-shift, never quite stable, as if not entirely possessed of the solidity usually attributed to sculpture. More like a vision than an object; a dream not yet material, partially existing in the future.

"More like a vision than an object; a dream not yet material, partially existing in the future."

I’m a novelist, and the experience of viewing Lee’s creations reminded me of the temporality inherent to literature. Reading, more explicitly than looking at visual art, is hitched to time, a book curving and flexing as it takes shape. Lee had wanted even more dimensionality for the sculptures: in an early proposal, she imagined one of the inner sculptures would step off the niche and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Though her earlier vision was unrealizable—for one thing, the museum’s front steps are especially crowded—some of this desired energy is visible in the Jindo sculptures, which spill out from their niches. Once again, as in much of Lee’s work, she exceeds the space provided.

Lee is devoted to her dogs, and to such an extent that, during a 2023 interview, her interlocutor Alain Elkann posited that, to better understand her work, one should learn the names and eras of each of her dogs. I grew up with Jindos. At some point—like Lee, who’s lived with up to three of these dogs at a time—my family had a trio of Jindos, a mother and two of her daughters. Jindos are intelligent, vigilant, and so ferociously loyal that there are stories of Jindos traveling hundreds of miles to find owners they’ve lost; they are also escape artists, spitzes capable of running, like cats, up walls. My distressed parents built our backyard wall higher and higher, but incredibly, as in a legend, our dogs kept escaping, no wall high enough to hold them. They’d roam around and then come back when they were ready: the dogs had defined their borders and had no interest in anyone else’s ideas of where they belonged. Why should they? Lunging free, they’d decide for themselves.




Contributors

R. O. Kwon
Author

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