seungtaek lee at gwangju art biennale 2010

artist to be out of breath, 1991
mixed media
image © designboom


seungtaek lee (b. 1932 kowon, korea)'s sculptures and environmental interventions take their inspiration from
elemental natural forces, as well as libidinal drives and bodily processes. much of his work in environmental
intervention shares a kinship with both american land art and korean shamanic traditions and embraces
chance and ephemerality in its attempts to form a collaborative partnership with natural phenomena such as fire,
water, wind and smoke (each of which lee has made the subject of a series of works). in addition to these
elemental works, lee has also intervened in the landscape to create massive, painterly abstractions that employ
watercolor, moss and a host of other materials to transform the land into a canvas.

exhibiting at the gwangju art biennale is 'the artist to be out of breath' (1991), a monumental, double self-portrait
which consists of bales of old clothes bound together into spindly, multi-limbed armatures that sprout two massive,
scowling heads. these twisted, body-like arrangements are displayed sprawled out on the floor, as if suffering
from exhaustion, and are tenuously connected by a length of black and white checked wooden beam, something
of a signature for lee. at first, this tortured array seems suggestive of two warring sides of the artist's personality
that have managed to reach a fragile equilibrium. lee's larger output from this period deals in large part with the division
of korea, and the representation of a divided self can be read as an allegory of a state torn apart by war and ideological
differences.



images © designboom



image © designboom



seungtaek lee
portrait © designboom



image © designboom