{"id":13712,"date":"2022-05-26T13:38:33","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T04:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/?post_type=insights&p=13712"},"modified":"2022-05-26T14:23:04","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T05:23:04","slug":"unbound","status":"publish","type":"insights","link":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/insights\/13712","title":{"rendered":"(Un)Bound"},"content":{"rendered":"

2022. 5. 25 – 7. 3
\nSeung-taek Lee<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaving the marks of binding physical forces has been a useful strategy for me as someone who likes to use tricks for reversals. Ironically, the act of binding seems to have drawn me deeper into the artistic process as it creates optical illusions with my material\u2019s physical qualities and creates the fantasy of movement.\u201d
\n\u2013 Seung-taek Lee, interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, August 2020<\/em><\/p>\n

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Seung-taek Lee, Untitled, 2018, Rope on canvas, 55.3 x 70.2 x 3(d) cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gallery Hyundai presents (Un)Bound, an exhibition of the work of Seung-taek Lee, from May 25 to July 3. Gallery Hyundai\u2019s fourth solo exhibition devoted to Lee, it follows on the heels of Lee Seung Taek\u2019s Non-Art: The Inversive Act, a large-scale retrospective in 2020 in which the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) looked back on the artist\u2019s vast body of work. In its conception, the focus of (Un)Bound was on Lee\u2019s series of \u201cbinding\u201d works, in which twine and rope appear as a key media physically visualizing his concepts; various other works in which twine itself does not feature, but the marks of binding can be seen; and his \u201cunbound\u201d canvas-based work, in which the binding concept is expressed more freely. The exhibition offers a glimpse at Seung-taek Lee\u2019s ambitious vision as someone who sought to open up new horizons in Korean contemporary art during the 1960s and 1970s through his approach of \u201cinversively\u201d seeing the world, thinking, and living through art.<\/p>\n

During the late 1950s, Seung-taek Lee began sharing work of an avant-garde nature, departing from the modern Western concept of sculpture to present work originating in a \u201cnon-sculpture\u201d concept. Instead of the traditional sculptural materials, he experimented with the boundaries of sculpture by using everyday materials and objects such as earthenware, \u201cGodret stones,\u201d twines, plastic, boards, paper, and books. His world of non-sculpture can be divided into two main categories. The first of them is the artist’s “non-material” series, consisting of installations and performances in which natural phenomena without physical volume, such as wind, smoke, or fire, are “sculpted” into moments that viewers can experience visually. The other major strand has been his \u201cbinding\u201d series, which forgoes methods of sculpting or shaping to present everyday objects that are literally bound or that bear the marks of binding. The binding series in particular is something that set Lee apart from other artists of his era, representing a key aesthetic methodology for his pursuit of \u201cnon-sculpture,\u201d or the inversion of objects\u2019 form and nature and the subversion of everyday familiarity.<\/p>\n

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Seung-taek Lee, Godret Stone, 1957\/1960s, Stone, wood, rope, 85 x 188 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The exhibition (Un)Bound focuses on various series by Lee from the 1950s until the present in which the act of \u201cbinding\u201d is emphasized as a strategic aesthetic language for the artist\u2019s rejection of traditional sculptural concepts and exploration of the avant-garde. The observations of Korean critics who saw some of the few exhibitions that featured Lee\u2019s work during the 1960s and 1970s were actively revisited by Korean and overseas researchers in the wake of the artist\u2019s presentation with the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize in 2009. In the assessment of critic Oh Kwang-su, Lee\u2019s work stood out from the overall level of innovation in sculpture, while his binding-based work was something distinct from the conceptual and minimalist artwork that appeared in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Another art historian, Joan Kee, offered a multifaceted discussion of the significance of Lee\u2019s body of work in art history in her \u201cUse on Vacation: The Non-Sculptures of Lee Seung-taek,\u201d published in 2013 in the Archives of Asian Art. She concluded that Seung-taek Lee\u2019s work from the 1960s could be seen as representing the origin of Korean installation art in light of the artist\u2019s choice to position his uniquely scaled artwork on the floor, walls, or ceiling in a decade when there was no concept of \u201cinstallation art\u201d and most sculptures were displayed on pedestals.<\/p>\n

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Seung-taek Lee, Tied White Porcelain, 2018, Paint on porcelain, 30.5(h) x \u00f8 30.5 cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The works presented in Gallery Hyundai\u2019s basement-level gallery include the Godret Stone pieces (1957\/1960s) that represented the starting point for Lee\u2019s \u201cnon-sculpture,\u201d as well as his large- scale Oji (traditional earthenware) pieces that apply the binding approach. The key point in the space lies in the distances between our eyes and brain as we encounter artwork that appears pliable, irrespective of the properties of the actual material. As an art student, Lee happened across a Godret stone, a traditional weaving item, at a museum in Seoul\u2019s Deoksugung Palace. Inspired by the sight, he carved out the center of a pebble and tied it with twine to a board, which he hung up in his home. Lee believed that he could turn these hard stones into his own work through his conceptual approach to their appearance of softness. He began whittling down riverside stones of various colors and shapes whenever he had the opportunity. Experimenting with different forms, such as tying one of them to a single short block of wood or binding two of them in sequence, he developed what would become known as his \u201csoft stone\u201d series. This exhibition offers a glimpse at multiple variations on his Godret Stone work.<\/p>\n

The Oji series emerged from the young 30-year-old artist Seung-taek Lee\u2019s dogged research into ways of installing his artwork in such a way that it could hang from the ceiling or dangle toward the ground. With its modular design, his work resembles a growing organism that bears the pinched marks of binding due to the pressure applied by outside forces. Lee experimented with avant-garde transformations in which crocks\u2014familiar items in traditional life\u2014became contemporary art. Working in collaboration with an earthenware factory, Lee included marks of pressing and binding, while varying the shapes so that no two would be identical, each unit transforming in a different way as it was installed in a different setting.<\/p>\n

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Seung-taek Lee, Untitled, 1985, Paper(from antique book), rope, wooden frame, 50.9 x 60.7 x 8(d) cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the first floor, the gallery presents prominent work from series in which Lee used rope\u2014a key material in his binding series\u2014as a way of \u201cvisualizing contradiction\u201d: his Paper Print, Tied Porcelain, Tied Canvas, and Rope Painting. Using paper positioned on a glass pane, the Paper Print series adopts a similar process to printmaking, but the results are unique works in which inclusion of rope means that there is only one \u201coriginal\u201d present. The series in question was created between the mid-1970s and early 1980s for presentation at the International Print Biennale, which was a popular event with the public; this exhibition presents six of the 10 or so surviving works. In contrast, the Rope Painting series was something that the artist began creating as an experiment in the 1960s, first presenting it before the world through the Contemporary Sculpture Invitational Exhibition event organized in 1972 by the Goethe-Institut Korea. Fascinated by the pliable, organic materiality of the three-dimensional lines in the rope that he used as a binding tool, Lee experimented with geometric patterns that resulted in three- dimensional abstraction. The work could be seen as his unique response to Op Art, which had just begun to find its way to Korea around the mid-1960s.<\/p>\n

The second floor gallery offers a look at the endless variations of Lee\u2019s binding series, which incorporate old books, stones, and ceramics. In a setting designed to resemble an artist\u2019s studio where many artworks have been assembled, viewers can see the fascinating ways in which Lee\u2019s work constantly transforms even as it is connected together by form and context. Bound works with clearly visible rope marks and Tied Canvas works in which the artist has simply bound a canvas itself give way to other approaches in which canvases are tied with other materials such as human hair. Replete with Seung-taek Lee\u2019s freewheeling attitude and humor, these works show how quick the artist was to observe his era, and how he never failed to respond to his times through his art. During the 1970s, human hair was considered highly valuable as a major export item for South Korea. But the wig exporting industry subsequently entered a decline and became a source of problems. One day during the early 1980s, the artist heard a vendor who was calling for people to \u201cbuy some hair!\u201d rather than urging them to sell it. He bought a bundle of hair, and he went on to use that black Korean hair to create unusual painting series such as Dance, Hair Calligraphy, and Hairy Canvas. Resembling paintings made with black ink on achromatic canvases, the works vividly show Lee\u2019s avant-garde spirit and rejection of constraints. As viewers encounter images that are strange and mysterious rather than familiar, they will experience a sense of shock and wonder that turns on their head the ideas they hold about objects and art.<\/p>\n

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Seung-taek Lee was born in 1932 in Kow\u014fn, South Hamgy\u014fng Province, in what is now North Korea. After majoring in sculpture at Hongik University, he joined the Wonhyung Club in 1964, embarking on innovations in the sculpture exhibition format as a member of a group exploring avant-garde aesthetics. During the 1970s and 1980s, Lee was regularly invited to take part in exhibitions with series that involved \u201cbinding\u201d and \u201cdeconstructing\u201d everyday objects and various materials and shapes. His ongoing artistic experimentation and challenging of established art would develop in 1980 into the concept of \u201cnon-sculpture,\u201d as Lee increasingly pursued artwork that visualized non-material materials such as smoke, wind, fire, and water. His body of work became the focus of renewed attention and reassessment in 2009 when he was honored with the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize. Lee has held solo exhibitions at major institutions in Korea and overseas, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2020), White Cube in London (2018), L\u00e9vy Gorvy in New York (2017), and Gallery Hyundai (2014 and 2015). He has also been invited to participate in the Japan\/Korea\/Singapore touring exhibition Awakenings: Art and Society in Asia 1960s-1990s (2019), Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965 (2016), Artevida (2014), Prague Biennale 6 (2013), and the 8th Gwangju Biennale (2010). His work has been included in the collections of major world art institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney), the Tate Modern (London), the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, M+ (Hong Kong), MMCA, the Seoul Museum of Art, and Seoul Olympic Museum of Art (SOMA).<\/p>\n

Gallery Hyundai
\n14 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
\n+82 2 2287 3500<\/p>\n

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