Too Beautiful to be a Monster: Lee Bul at Deitch Projects – By Eunhee Yang

Lee Bul’s new works, shown at one of the Deitch Projects’ galleries in SoHo, go beyond the revolting, sexual cyborgs and monsters that brought the Korean artist such international visibility as the Hugo Boss Prize and a showing at the Venice Biennale several years ago.

Too Beautiful to be a Monster: Lee Bul at Deitch Projects

By Eunhee Yang

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Bul’s new works, shown at one of the Deitch Projects’ galleries in SoHo, go beyond the revolting, sexual cyborgs and monsters that brought the Korean artist such international visibility as the Hugo Boss Prize and a showing at the Venice Biennale several years ago. Too beautiful and sensuous to support the title "Monster," Bul’s two- and three-dimensional works manifest the artist’s aesthetic aspiration to veil the grotesque with the decorative and even the traditional. Her decorative impulse ranges from crystal bead pendants to line paintings on silk in predominantly monochromatic (white, red, yellow) colors. Bul’s experimental spirit and craft skills persist in utilizing such diverse materials as mother of pearl and craft beads.

Bul’s show consisted of several different types of works. The closest to her previous sci-fi, hybrid creatures are the futuristic figures that fill the main space of the gallery. The pristine white, polyurethane, light fragments are hung independently from one another as if the deconstructed forms contained their own lives. The disjointed parts allude to Bul’s previous anti-mechanical, sensual cyborgs but refrain from invoking their original form.

Other works expose a transformation of her visual language from the futuristic to the decorative. Crystal bead and wire works (two suspended and another shown in a glass and metal case) in the upper gallery turn away from the monstrous forms. They appear free-flowing but not biomorphic. In fact, they are too dazzling and attractive to be associated with hideous images although they possess the forlorn quality of the previous cyborgs and the raw fish with decorative materials. Eye-catching rather than repulsive, the sparkling, chandelier-like installations surmise the malleable boundary of pure beauty and the unfamiliar species.

Bul’s decorative force is more evident in her new two-dimensional works, which are shown slightly tucked away from the sculptural centerpieces. One type is urethane paint with white, monochromatic panels layered with mother of pearl inlay. Varying in size, they appear as immaculately white as the scattered, sculptural fragments. Shimmering, abstract lines and forms echo the crystal bead works. Probably conceived as counterparts to the beaded works, the paintings invoke similar serene, tranquil emotions frozen under the glossy surface.

The most decorative and least grotesque are the paintings on silk. Employing fluid paint on monochromatic fabric in colors such as brick red, yellow, orange colors. She created calligraphic, flower-like patterns without additional coloring. The four panels are displayed adjacent to one another, resembling traditional Asian screens. The fairly large empty space fortifies the sense of Asian folding screens; her control of lines and careful use of space reveal what a superb painter she can be. It seems that Bul’s transformation continues in several directions at the same time. Her signature futuristic creatures seem to have gone, at least for a while.