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Dongwook Lee |
| ARARIO ARTIST |
The shape of emptiness:
notes on the identity of Dongwook Lee¡¯s figurines
Milovan Farronato
The human figure is at the forefront of the research and production of the young Korean artist Dongwook Lee. His remodelling of the body is an obsession that had led him over the last few years to breathe life into a new human species, an army of figures characterised by two leitmotifs: Dongwook¡¯s man is always to be found naked and in miniature. On one hand, working on a microscopic level links him up to a long tradition of interest in the skilful rendering of minute details in a small-scale reality; on the other, it reflects a desire to cover up, camouflage or conceal these ¡°figurines¡± in the backwaters of the most banal normality to which they might instinctively belong. One pokes his head out from the shell of a snail; another cries out desperately from behind a dry twig like a malignant wood spirit; yet another is to be found squashed inside a syringe, as if ready to be injected to another body along with all his dramatic charge. Their nudity seems to reflect the will to do away with the mystification of the human body, to show it without frills, without any indication of social status. It is here that Dongwook would appear to denote a break with the cultural traditions of his origins.
Thus nudity and diminutive stature, along with the same facial features and the same skin tone, constitute the binding elements of the ¡®hominidae¡¯ generated by Dongwook. From a mathematical point of view, this definition of the whole provides a sufficiently well-defined basis, yet it is valid only through the additional interplay of certain variables and constants. It is for this reason that we find Dongwook¡¯s individuals subjected to a wide range of treatments: fragmentation, mutilation, decapitation. We often find them deprived of sexual identity or even genetically modified; at other times they are stuck inside a container of some sort. For example, we might see a dozen figurines squashed inside a sardine can, like slaves or refugees stowed away in the hold of a ship; the faces of others are stuck inside pill bottles. A pregnant mermaid floats lifeless within a glass jar, and – like Ophelia – seems absurdly enough to have drowned, while two hybrid bird-like figures are trapped for eternity within a claustrophobic aviary – one of whom is also doted with two heads.
This variety in the subject – possible declinations of the same human prototype – is Dongwook¡¯s way of offering a hint of individuality and giving each of his characters their own particular history. Therefore the artist evokes ancient mythologies, or rites of tribal fetishism, or even elements of religious inspiration. A man stares at the silhouette of his face in a dark puddle, echoing the tale of Narcissus; an obese Christ is to be found with hands and feet nailed to the wall; a female figure is harpooned like a bait on a hook. Hence there is a fairly wide range of subjects veering towards a somewhat gothic nature, and which if defined by what it does not include, acquires further characteristics and meanings. For example, the symbiosis between mother and son, or lovers, or that of a group of men ready to fight against a common enemy are missing. There is never any dialogue between the figures, and the relational element is either entirely absent or reduced to the bare minimum. There lacks a sense of solidarity and mutual collaboration. Dongwook¡¯s man expresses no aggressiveness, but nor does he express conviviality; there is no hate, yet no love either. Here we stand before the antithesis of the renaissance spirit which led man to better his condition and realise that he is able to guide his own nature and his own destiny, along with all the consequences that this notion has entailed over the course of history. ¡°Natura non vincitur nisi parendo¡±, as Francis Bacon would say. Dongwook on the other hand sees nature a something that we are unavoidably subjected to. The countless severed heads that populate his world are not the sign of some macabre ritual, but of the heads¡¯ own inability to guide the nature of things, to decide their own fate. There are no hints at redemption in their gestures or poses, nor are there symptoms of freedom: only an oppressing sense of injustice. They emit a sense of such mystically resigned faith in the notion that man is powerless! They denote a state of waiting without a ray of hope. More often than not, they are presented as trophies, perched on little pedestals: who could it be but blind chance to win such motionless prizes?
In stark contrast to the aseptic nature of his exhibitional development, based on the elegant and sober juxtapositions of his micro-sculptures, on entering the artist¡¯s studio, we are faced with a huge selection of pieces of equipment, plates and alembics, his creations standing among them like archaeological finds, residues, fossils of everyday life. Of course this is not a form of hedonism, but rather an obsessive yet well-ordered desire to gather, collect and classify. Dongwook¡¯s attitude is that of the entomologist arranging his collection of the most fantastical and unlikely categories. Usually, behind any classification lies the conviction of being able to recognise and thus possess the reality surrounding us. On the contrary, Dongwook seems to want to remind us of how science (in its modern conception) remains a hopelessly human doctrine and hence doomed to failure from the outset. The species in whose likeness the artist creates responds to a concluded case history, but it is still subject to stimuli and echoes of the past and present, from East to West and from history to legends, from fables to the world of archetypes. It cannot be catalogued simply through the attribution of a nominative and a genitive, as has been done for all the animal and vegetable species; here, periphrases are needed, more articulate turns of phrase, for his world is a particularly poetic one which, a priori, always retains the possibility for exceptions.
A few years ago, besides the works described above, the artist placed some charred residues of dried fruit in a glass case, caught in the stage before turning to dust. A quite singular work which by contrast also foretold of the possible ultimate fate of his creations: ¡°ashes to ashes, dust to dust¡±. Recently, those same fruit residues have become sculptures manipulated by the artist in their own right, and this brings down yet another sombre curtain on the interpretation of Dongwook¡¯s entire production. While the figurines initially seemed to be mere depositories of stories without happy endings, in the light of this direct comparison with fruit caught in the moment before its decomposition, they turn out to constitute a clear presage of death. They take on the semblance of spectral images that belong more to the realm of the dead than that of the living. It is at this point that the obscenity of the naked bodies is legitimised by the bad omen they convey. As a matter of fact, the etymological root of the word ¡®obscene¡¯ – and thus indecent – is closely linked to that which bears a connection with death. The oscena avis for example was the hoopoe as it fed and sheltered in corpses. Be as it may, whether they are sculpted a moment before or a moment after their inevitable decline, they remain perturbing in their shaping of the existential void.
¡°Oh, unknown nothingness! Truly a soul cannot have a better awareness in this world than to perceive its own nothingness and to stay in its own cell.¡± So wrote Angela of Foligno, ascetic saint of the 14th century: an invocation that Dongwook Lee¡¯s imagery would appear to echo.
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