Over a career spanning five decades, Lee Kun-Yong has experimented with performance, video, sculpture, and installation. In the 1970s, in the context of martial law enacted by Korea’s authoritarian government, Lee joined the art collective Avant-Garde and cofounded Space and Time, the latter dedicated to exploring the relationship between art making and the artist’s physical presence. In his ongoing Bodyscape series, begun in 1976, Lee makes marks on the canvas through a series of bodily actions performed within a set of rules that constrain his movement, such as standing behind, beside, or with his back to the canvas. As Lee explains: “Usually, a painter paints something on the two-dimensional surface that he or she is facing. In my case, I place the panel in front of my body and draw lines as far as my body allows without being able to see the pictorial surface. So it is not that I draw something on the two-dimensional surface while seeing it with my eyes, as my conscious instructs me. Rather, it is to represent the process through which my body perceives the two-dimensional surface, via the lines drawn by the movements of my arm.” Here, Lee positioned his body in the center of the canvas and painted around it, the length of each stroke determined by the reach of his arms. The resulting full-body silhouette is intentional. The performance captures both the deliberate brushstrokes and the accidental drippings.
Virginia Moon
2023