Recent Acquisition | A New Work by Lee Bul
Lee Bul (South Korean, born 1964), Untitled (Mekamelencolia – Velvet #10 DDRG35AC), 2018. Triptych; human hair, mother-of-pearl, acrylic paint, and dried flowers on silk velvet. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund (2019-95). © Lee Bul
Lee Bul’s work references literature, architecture, and the cultural histories of both Europe and South Korea. Central to her practice is an exploration of the boundaries between the human body and computer technology, of organic and mechanical forms.
Untitled (Mekamelencolia – Velvet #10 DDRG35AC), 2018—which incorporates silk velvet, mother-of-pearl, and human hair into a painting with a shimmering surface—reflects Lee’s ongoing interest in experimentation with organic materials that evoke the human body.
Lee is interested in the histories and conflicting layers of meanings that such materials bring into her works; mother-of-pearl and silk velvet in particular carry additional connotations connected with the artist’s long-standing engagement with the idea of inversion and making the interior of biological forms visible:
Velvet, silk, and mother-of-pearl [are of interest] because they remind me of organisms. Velvet was first developed to be used in place of hair and fur, but it is made with silk [which] is made from the discharge of silkworms, so it comes from the inside. Mother-of-pearl may look like a hard shell, but it is really an organ, the inside of shellfish, created when shellfish try to heal a wound. Materials that are related to organisms, that come from the inside out, interest me.
Detail of Untitled (Mekamelencolia – Velvet #10 DDRG35AC)
In Untitled, the juxtaposition of silk velvet with the artist’s own hair is an unsettling combination of the opulent and the corporeal. These materials coalesce into abstract biomorphic forms, recalling both plant matter and undersea life.