Nucleus, a solo exhibition for Lee Seung-Jio, known as “the pipe artist” in Korean art world, is held in Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong from May 26 to July 8. He uses a structure of cylindrical bands resembling pipes as the foundation of pure formative language, and he has constructed an original abstract world by playing variations of them on his canvases. The image of pipes, which the artist referred to as a “nucleus,” represents the illusion-like nature of physicality, as well as a symbol of modern civilization. I will be exploring the artistic journey that Lee has taken and will analyze the essence of abstract art that he had pursued.

Lee Seung-Jio, Nucleus F-G-999 (1970), Oil on canvas, 162 x 162cm

 

In January 2016, curated by artist Park Seo-Bo, a group exhibition for Suh Seung-Won, Choi Myoung-Young, and Lee Seung-Jio, who represent the Origin Group, was held at Gallery Perrotin in Paris. The solo exhibition for Lee Seung-Jio titled Nucleus is held in Gallery Perrotin in Hong Kong this year in an attempt to further expand the trend of revaluating Korean abstract art by focusing on dansaekhwa. The exhibition holds particular significance as the first solo exhibition that was held overseas after Lee’s death. The works displayed in the exhibition include pieces from his time as a member of the Korea Avant-Garde Association (AG; 1969–1972) that show tendencies toward optical art and monochromatic paintings; experimental pieces using new materials made after return from his trip to New York; and large-scale works that resemble triptychs, created by piecing together several panels. A collection of artworks persistently centered around the theme of “nucleus” from throughout his lifetime are gathered and displayed in one place.

 

A Beginning of the New Abstract Art

Lee Seung-Jio was born in 1941 in Yongcheon, Pyeonganbuk-do, and studied painting at Hongik University. As his career developed, he earned the monikers “pipe artist” or “artist of the nucleus” in the Korean art world by first generation art critics such as Yi Il and Oh Kwang-su. He titled all his works Nucleus, and, like the other artists of monochromatic paintings (Dansaekhwa), he included the year of creation and the series number as subtitles. He was introduced into the art world through the Origin Foundation Exhibition (1963), which reflected young artists’ volition to break away from the influences of art informel and abstract expressionism that dominated the Korean art world in the mid- to late 1950s. Origin was founded in 1962 by Lee Seung-Jio and several other artists in their 20s who belong to the “April 19 Generation,” including Suh Seung-Won and Choi Myoung-Young.¹⁾ While their predecessors, who were referred to as Korean War Generation artists, actively accepted art informel and abstract expressionism, global trends of the 1950s, Origin artists were a new generation that resisted such trends and advocated geometric abstract art by pursuing an experimental spirit. Artists associated with Origin shared the common characteristics of stressing the pure formativeness and geometric abstraction of flatness.

 

 

 Installation view of Lee Seung-Jio’s solo exhibition Nucleus at Perrotin gallery in Hong Kong

 

Lee’s works also reflect the shared awareness for the flat abstraction, like the other members of the Origin Group. However, from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, the works he created showed appropriate balance between two-dimensional flatness and the three-dimensional illusions of op art. This is the aspect that distinguishes Lee from other artists affiliated with Origin or the monochromatic painters characterized by Park Seo-Bo, Ha Chong-Hyun, Chung Sang-hwa, Yun Hyong-Keun, Chung Chang-sup, Kwon Young-Woo, and so forth. His art displays the characteristics of abstract paintings, which emphasize and revert to flatness, but he would push this non-representativeness further to create visual and psychological tension by creating the illusions of op art with vertical, horizontal, or diagonal bands. In other words, he presented a complete world of abstract art by creating a geometric abstractness, while the two-dimensional planarity and three-dimensional depth created poetic and rhythmic dynamics through “movements, afterimages, and visual vacillation” on one canvas.
²⁾Then, from 1968 onwards, Lee’s work started to “transform to incorporate pluralistic spatial structures.” In addition to the exhibitions for Origin, he participated in all three exhibitions planned by the AG to advocate “the avant-garde, innovation, and experimental art.” He also won major awards at the Korean National Art Exhibition from 1968 to 1971, and was actively engaged in creating and introducing works for Salon des Indépendants and École de Seoul in the mid- to late 1970s. As the monochromatic painters started presenting their works on international stages at events like the Paris Biennale as the first generation of Korean abstract artists, Lee, too, participated in the São Paulo Biennale in 1971 and 1977 In this process, he had “an intense confrontations with flatness” as Kim Bog-yeong put it, and persistently penetrated into the multiple strata of geometric abstract art with the use of simple bands.

Diverse Variations of the “Nucleus” Motif

From the early years of his career to the mid-1970s, Lee created geometric abstract paintings which displayed tendencies of optical art by painting bands of cylindrical pipes of diverse sizes. He played with variation on the sizes or distance between the pipes to create a sense of direction on the canvas. For instance, the bands of recurring vertical, horizontal, or diagonal pipes that appear in his works from 1968 are painted with oil paint to construct homogeneous color planes. He did not use a ruler or spray, but painted the surface meticulously using only a brush³⁾. His works, which won the first prize in the Dong-A Art Exhibition in 1968, bore resemblance to the second generation of abstract artists in Korea, with unique visual elements of op art. Park Seo-Bo wrote in a critique:

“The geometric abstract art that emerged last year, which could be grouped together as one, present an abstract form that is newly being developed in Korea. ... The second generation of abstract artists in their 20s share common characteristics ... which is that the Eastern, spiritual world of Zen is stirring within—and this is the proof that no matter what pattern they take on, they pursue Koreanness as a global issue of today. Lee Seung-Jio, as part of this line of artists, is a type of artist whose artistic world relies on the strictly geometric form, yet reflects on his work as a social and cultural reaction. The heartless visual grammar seen in his art allows us to feel the mechanical elements more strongly than the art of other artists in the group. Lyricism is known as the common denominator of these young artists, but Lee shows a somewhat exceptional aspect.”

 

 Left) nucleus (1968), Oil on Canvas, 173 x 130cm. 

Right) Necleus PM-76 (1969), Oil on Canvas, 162 x 162cm. 

 

Park Seo-Bo evaluates that Lee created a Korean vernacular abstract painting that contains a layer unique to Korea, with the Zen philosophy of the East and the new geometric order.

Examining the materials left by the artist himself, we find that the “nucleus” was not the figurative object that drew his attention initially. Rather, he sought optical afterimages and resonance within the flat structure and support of the paintings. Art critic Yi Il interpreted the meaning of “nucleus” in an essay he wrote for Lee Seung-Jio’s solo exhibition held at Kwanhoon Gallery in 1980:

“What significance does pipe hold? ... Could it be the aesthetics developed by the technology and engineering of the modern industrial civilization or the pleasure chosen by human beings who are fettered inside the snare of machinery? The cruel heartlessness, cold silence, solid indifference, non-individuality, and uniformity of it.”

However, the nucleus goes beyond the lexical definition as the nucleus of an atom or cell structure and signifies “the center or origin of something,” which is also recognized as the creation and “diffusion, proliferation, tremor, resonance, and composition” of energy through the recurring units and mechanical structure. This is where the abstract artists and critics who worked along the lines of modernism within the history of Korean modern art can be connected to the theoretical movements that asserted the “return to the origin.”

Awaiting Historical Revaluation in Art History

In the late 1970s, homogeneous structures and compositions inclined towards monochromatic tendencies start to appear in Lee Seung-Jio’s works. While his early works focused on images resembling cylindrical pipes, from the mid-1970s, he started to display characteristics that are in line with Korean monochromatic paintings. While the monochromatic paintings of Park Seo-Bo, Ha Chong-hyun, Chung Sang-hwa, Chung Chang-sup, and the like placed emphasis on the “physicality” unique to these paintings that stress the skills of individual artists and the works’ material properties, Lee Seung-Jio brought the homogeneity of fine art to the fore by creating a matte and immaterial surface and image. This is the visual element that makes his works more spiritual and fundamental. Also, the nucleus motif goes through the stage of “internalization” on the two-dimensional frame.

“The color plane and color bands corresponding with each other expand across the entire screen and vibrate discreetly by falling into an infinitely continual intrinsic rhythm.”⁴⁾ Lee realizes “the visual and conceptual plane integrates the artistic motif and the plane and rejects the division that distinguishes the pipe as the tangible object from the plane as its support.”⁵⁾ Lee went through different stages of artistic expression in his career: “the construction of three-dimensional space” in the early stage and “the formative world of dialectical synthesis in a single-plane structure” in the mid-stage.

Then from the mid-1980s to his death, the monochromatic images in his pieces became blurred, and the metallic textures and mechanical structures characterizing his initial and early stages started to reappear, being explored in diverse variations. Lee’s paintings displayed the “transition to non-material spatiality,” which initially started out from the “nucleus” that contained concrete objects and optical illusions. He completed his own formative language by setting up the nucleus and ceaselessly mediating and connecting the planarity of the screen itself with three-dimensionality. His artistic space reverts and transforms to a non-material performative space within the two-dimensional plane that works to support the piece. Also while communicating with the monochromatic painters who belong to the generation before his, he constructed a geometric world of abstract art that is aesthetically distinguished from theirs by presenting multiple visual elements that contact one another on a plane.

The solo exhibition held in Gallery Perrotin in Hong Kong seems to call for a revaluation of Lee Seung-Jio and his art’s place in the history of art. The first posthumous retrospective of Lee Seung-Jio was held at Ho-Am Art Museum in 1991, and catalogues reviewing his artworks and the artistic world were published for other posthumous exhibitions held at Gallery Hyundai and Total Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996. However, a long time has passed since. Just as the Korean art of the post-war period was not properly evaluated for a long period of time, the works of Lee Seung-Jio’s are no exception. Fortunately, the bereaved family of the artist preserved his large-scale art in excellent condition. Before his collections get scattered here and there, there is a desperate demand for a comprehensive exhibition that could bring together his works to be revaluated in the history of art.

 

1) Oh Kwang-su. “Thorough Formative Awareness: Lee Seung-Jio’s World,” Lee Seung Jio 1968-1990 (Seoul: Total Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996), 15; The Origin Group was founded in 1962 and held its Foundation Exhibition in 1963. Seo Seong-rok, “The Origin, Today and Tomorrow,” The Revert and Diffusion of Contemporary Art. (Seoul: Art Now, 2006), 11.

2) Lee Il, “A Type of Korean Geometric Abstract Art: On the Respective Exhibition of Lee Seung Jio,” Lee Seung Jio 1968-1990 (Seoul: Total Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996), 24. Originally published in Lee Seung Jio 1968-1990 (Seoul: Ho-Am Art Museum, 1991).

3) Soon Chun Cho and Barbara Bloemink, The Color of Nature: Monochrome Art in Korea (NY: Assouline, 2008), 112-135.

4) Lee, “Korean Geometric Abstract Art.”

5) Kim Bok-young, “A Confrontation with the Plane: 25 Years of Legacy”, Lee Seung Jio 1968-1990 (Seoul: Ho-Am Art Museum, 1991).

6) Lee Il, “On Lee Seung Jio’s Recent Works: Upon His 6th Solo Exhibition”, Lee Seung Jio (Seoul: Duson Gallery, 1987). The list of critics who wrote a number of essays on Lee Seung Jio at the time includes Lee Il, Oh Kwang-su, Kim Bok-young, and the like. Lee Il was the one who wrote most of the essays for Lee Seung-Jio’s solo exhibitions.

   

 

 

 

 

※ This article was originally published in Art in Culture magazine (July 2017) and reprinted under authority of a MOU between KAMS and Art in Culture.