A Journey of Space, From Grid Toward Body:
Lee Bong-Real's <Erased Space> & <Untitled Space>
Seen overall, Lee Bong-Real's monochrome planes have undergone periodic changes with every decade since his first exhibition in 1968. In the 1970's, emphasis had been laid on the 'grid structure', focusing on how to divide the plane with appropriate space units for maximum emergence of surface. In the next decade, Lee's attempt was directed to break away from, or rather, to deconstruct that grid, The following ten years have been a total estrangement from the grid in the previous days, devoted to how to make a rapport between the canvas and himself, utilizing the concept of 'body' to the utmost.
As another finale of almost a decade since his exhibition at Galerie Hyundai in the early 1990s, Lee's solo exhibition this time marks a significant cornerstone in terms of his artistic career. While recollecting the past achievement on the one hand, he tries to blot out the slightest traces related to the past on the other, intent on giving shape to the portrait of his very inner self during this decade.
The frame of understanding his recent works will be set on how to make out the 'rapport between canvas and body'. As the term of prime importance in his recent works, a specific account of 'body' is presupposed in contradistinction to 'grid' throughout all the stage of his interpretation of space.
First, it is necessary to remind that Lee has always tried to deal with the concept of plane in direct relationship to that of space. From the outset, his foremost attention has been put on how to interpret the problem of 'space', as is noted in the fact that space has been the formed through the variegated interpretation of space.
As such, it seems natural that the concept of body in his recent works is to be grasped within the context of his spatial concept. For him, body is not something separate from the space, but becomes another vehicle to overcome the grid he had used hithero as the means of perceiving space.
The <Erased Space> and <Untitled Space> this time seem to be an attempt to extricate himself from his previous search for space. Trying to efface the past, he shows an apparent intention of establishing a new foundation of interpreting space. As if wanting to deconstruct the subject of 'space' itself, almost all of these works, including the larger ones, shoes perfect monochrome and perfectly even plane. Seen at large, the main tone of grey blue that appeared in <Space-9215(1995)> and <Space with Square(1997)> was gradually changed into the square monochrome or ring-shaped canvas of grey. These days, by crossing out even the traces of strokes at the surface of monochrome, the canvas has come to be clearer and somewhat lighter grey.
Is such a transformation a development from the old line of grid in the 1970s-1980s or is it a severance from the past for newer attempt? Seen from the titles, Lee's attempt this time seems to manifest the obvious intention of deleting the past for new experiment.
Here, the body did not merely refer to Lee's own freshly envelope but comprehended his whole personality and ontological being itself. In this painting, trace of bodily gesture, different from the numerous fragments of drawing strokes in the past, covered widely all over the canvas, leaving certain marks like the scratches on the skin. By lightly scratches or scooping with palette knife, the surface came to the fore with both the internal and external appearances, evoking the bodily existence of Lee's own inner and outer being.
Ever since then, <Erased Space>, striking out even the bodily signs, has carried more and more weight on charcoal to the extent that the monochrome of heavy grey came to the fore of large canvas. In so doing, the canvas itself has come to be bountiful enough to hold the artist's entire existence. Frequently, the strokes of charcoal, permeating the cracks of space lightly covered with acrylic, has made secretive, reverberating waves over the plane. Effectively covering the past grid and its remnants, these strokes have made up literally the <Erased Space> or <Untitled Space> in which everything lurks anonymous.
In Lee's case, the concept of body can be understood only with regards to the incarnation of one's whole being. Whereas the grid in the past had been the intellectual as well as emotional product related to the outer objects, the canvas in the <Erased Space> and <Untitled Space> heads for the body as the in-depth entity. Here, the surface of work is nothing short of the expression of fleshy substance that incorporates all the laughs and scars of the artist. The bodily signs represented by the minuscule particle of grid, the gentle strokes of charcoal that stir up these signs, and further, the elastic vibration added to the canvas by the rubbing of hands, all amount to the manifestation of Lee's entire being.
As such, Lee's <Erased Space> represents not mere physical thing or object but it comes to be a space alive with his whole life and breath. In other words, it is not mere intellectual structure, nor conceptual object, but a human, living entity that incorporates the artist's whole being into his art. There, the unsatisfied language that has too much to say but is never given the chance to do so, breathes and lingers at the back of silence, creating an anonymous space or rather an anti-space that hides the absent message that is to be spoken someday. The space this artist glances at in philosophical ripeness is, to the letter, 'erased' as well as 'untitled' space that can't be named with anything. What we meet there is the space as the incarnation of the artist's whole entity.