Pavilion of Korea
at the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Press Release
Exhibition Title: The Love is gone but the Scar will heal
Commissioner: Yun Cheagab
Exhibitor: Lee Yongbaek
Arts Council Korea is pleased to announce “The Love is gone but
the Scar will heal,” a solo presentation of works by Lee Yongbaek
at the Korean Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale from June 4
to November 27, 2011. The exhibition will feature five works in
video, sculpture, and painting that reveals the pain in the history
of Korea's modern politics and culture, and its hope for the
future. It connotes the past, present, and future of Korea passing
through the inflow of Western civilization, colonization and
liberation, division of the country, ultrahigh speed economic
development and its aftereffects, and a maturity that the Koreans
now want to hold. The exhibition is curated by commissioner
Yun Cheagab.
The exhibition will present five works of Lee's works: Angel-
Soldier, Broken Mirror, Pieta: Self-death, Pieta: Self-hatred, and
Plastic Fish. Angel-Soldier is a video performance in which Lee
questions the nature of civilization by identifying antinomic
subjects, angel and soldier, and distorts the social situation of
Korea, which is still in a ceasefire period. Soldiers wearing
military uniforms in flower prints slowly move in an artificial
flower jungle. Their camouflage, trickery, and desperate movement present the current situation of Korea, in which the interests and strategies of four powers (US, Japan, China, and Russia) and those of South and North Koreas cross in secret.
The Broken Mirror is comprised of a mirror, a flat screen, and a computer. In this video work, the mirror seems to suddenly break, and creates an illusion that the mirror is actually breaking. The artist questions the border between what is real and what is not, and through this, Lee builds overwhelming pressure of self-disruption.
The series Pieta is a pair of sculptures, 4 meters high and 3 meters wide, uses both the molded figure and the mold itself. In Pieta: Self-death, the mold of Virgin Mary holds molded Jesus. The work Pieta: Self-hatred shows the molded figure attacking and destroying the original mold it is made from. This series metaphorically expresses Angel Soldier-Photo, 2011, Digital print, 250x180cm contradictions of human existence, atheistic, materialistic
modern society and its disquieting madness, absurd situations of Korea in which Eastern and Western values coexist, and so on.
Plastic Fish is a painting that Lee shows on canvas artificial
plastic floats in vibrant colors arranged in parallel rows. The
painting's rich coloring is as strong as Korea's ancient painting
“Shamanic God Painting”. In it, the artist suggests how “fake
fish” captures the “real fish” to survive, yet, the real, natural
fish is then abducted by its own attempt to survive. This
brutal logic is, in fact, created by humans, and this logic also
surrounds us, humans, in different ways.
Lee Yongbaek unravels political and cultural issues of Korea
occurring in the early 21st century through the visual form
of contemporary art. Although he has always made new
attempts in wide fields, his pieces have not lacked the unity of
their overall context and have maintained a taut tension. This
achievement itself shows well his artistic, inner power that
he has accumulated in over twenty years. This artistic, inner
power has been strongly built through not only his interest in
technology, but also his continual observation of human relationships
with culture, politics, and nature.
Lee Yongbaek has performed experiences in various technologies,
from single-channel video, audio systems, kinetics, to robotics. In
particular, he is recognized as the representative artist in these artistic
fields in Korea. The reason his work is highly evaluated is not only due
to his technological experiments, but also due to his attempt through
which he contains in his pieces the peculiar issues of Korean politics
and culture, and his imagination in the form of these technologies.
Recently, he has been presenting pieces created using new styles,
covering wide range of genres from video art, which he has long been
concentrating on, to sculpture and painting. This kind of attempt is
one of his strengths. He does not insist on using only familiar forms,
but always tries something new while maintaining a unity with his
existing works. The presentation of his recent works has become an
opportunity to effectively arrange and highlight his wide interests,
which deal with life, society, religion, and politics.
For further inquiries please contact
kr.pavilion2011@gmail.com
