Johyun Gallery_Seoul is pleased to announce Between, Lee Bae's solo exhibition, from September 4 to November 10, 2024. The exhibition presents bronze sculptures 2m in height and 1.6m in width, one in black and the other in white. A charcoal-black brushstroke spreads across one wall, giving form to negative space in perfect harmony. The yellow light flooding onto the two sculptures—one umbral black and the other brilliant white—is reminiscent of the artist's hometown moonlight. It evokes the lume over the ritualistic burning of the moon-house, or Daljiptaeugi (La Maison de la Lune Brûlée), held every year on the first full moon of the lunar year in the artist's hometown of Cheongdo. Townsfolk gathered charcoal from the remains of this lunar-pyro-ritual. Lee began showing a series of monumental installation works in 2022, set upon backdrops of expanding, externality-directed spaces. This exhibition pivots to shift the center of gravity, drawing and pulling that externality back in.
This deep-retrospective structure, gravitating toward an invisible foundation at the very focal point of civilization, was evident in Johyun Gallery's 2023 special exhibition ORIGIN, EMERGENCE and RETURN at the Rockefeller Center in New York. At the iconic and historic landmark in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, with the Channel Gardens above the Rink Level Gallery, a site-specific 7m-tall Issu du feu sculpture of stacked charcoals was on display. Tied into pine charcoal bundles of ropey and columnar pine, each stout branch was fired in a large kiln for a month. In the indoor space, Lee presented a series of works from the Issu du feu series, their polished charcoal surfaces shimmering with luster. Between the charcoal-stacked sculpture exhibited in the above-ground garden and the serial works exhibited in horizontal succession below street level, charcoal-black pointed us to the cosmic truth of connectedness between our yearning for heaven and human connection.
Lee Bae presented La Maison de la Lune Brûlée at this year's Venice Biennale, a solo exhibition at the Wilmotte Foundation. In the middle of the exhibition hall, where the floor is entirely covered with Korean hanji, stands a huge black granite sculpture symbolizing meok (Korean ink stick), inviting visitors into the brushstrokes that run across the walls and floor. Requiring visitors to remove their shoes before stepping onto the paper-floor space was partly Lee's intent to draw visitors into a Korean cultural experience. The Venetian canals seen beyond the yellow moonlight passage of the backyard resemble the moonlit evenings by the creek in the artist's hometown Cheongdo, where the Daljiptaeugi (moon house burning) was held. "I intended to connect the audience with the water, to complete a cycle of sorts between nature and people," explains Lee.
"We as human beings—or as humanity—stand somewhere between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Much of our lives are situated in the external and tangible realm... However, there is an entire cosmos of spiritual and metaphysical nature within as well; its immense breadth and depth is invisible to the eye... I believe it is what is inside that defines and structures the outside world. It creates, institutionalizes, and controls the outer world... There is a role for art there, I believe. Consociating the inner world and external world so there can be some meaningful flux."
Thirty years ago, Lee moved to France, dreaming of a way to take his practice forward. There, a mnemonic encounter with charcoal awoke him to his Lethean origin. Since then, Lee Bae has worked with charcoal materials and black-and-white calligraphic abstraction, showcasing Korean painting on the international stage. Through this latest exhibition, he invites us to step out of our shoes and back into our forgotten place of origin, to shake off the journey's dust from our feet and to start anew in a place set apart.
Johyun Gallery_Seoul presents Between, Lee Bae's second solo exhibition this year. Previously, from May 10 to August 18, Johyun Gallery_Dalmaji presented Lee Bae's solo exhibition Flowing, which focused on Lee’s physicality, and introduced his video work Burning, unveiled at the Venice Biennale. For his latest exhibition, a portion of this video will be shown on the curved LED billboard installed on the exterior wall of COEX from August 29 to September 21, 2024, coinciding with the Seoul Frieze period.
