Spring Sparking _ YunBok Lee's Sculpture

 

이양호 _Gallery MOA, 관장

 

겨울의 혹한을 견디고 움터 오르는 생명을 보며 우리는 봄의 강한 에너지를 느낀다. 앞 다투어 피어나는 생명의 향연은 봄 그 자체인 것이다.

이윤복의 작업에서도 이런 강한 에너지가 느껴진다. 차가운 금속성의 스테인리스 스틸 판이 내는 광택은 노동의 승리와 연마의 꽃을 피워 새로운 생명을 탄생시킨다. 이 생명은 봄의 생기와 활기를 그대로 품고 흥미로운 광채를 내뿜는다.

상당한 양의 금속판을 자르고 망치로 두드려 형태를 만든 후 용접하여 붙이는 노동의 과정을 거쳐 탄생한 이윤복의 작업은 강한 재료의 속성과 다르게 매우 유연하고 생기 넘치며, 비정형이 지닌 불규칙성으로 인해 재기 발랄한 상상을 유도한다.

물론 그가 만든 작품이 특정한 대상, 무엇보다도 인체를 연상시킨다고 하더라도 그것과는 다르게 자율적인 형태를 지닐 수 있는 것은 그의 제작 방식 때문이다.

이윤복은 밑그림이나 드로잉을 바탕으로 형태를 만드는 것이 아니라 작업하는 과정에서 우연의 결정과 직관에 따라 형태를 만들어 가는데 이런 제작방식은 이윤복 작가의 노동과 사고의 에너지를 고스란히 담아 자기 발생적으로 진화한다.

조각으로 창조된 차가웠던 금속은 봄의 에너지를 품고 공간을 밝히는 영혼의 불꽃으로 만들어 진다.

작품의 스테인리스 스틸 판이 내는 광택은 투명한 표면에 충돌하는 빛들이 정착할 장소를 찾지 못하고 불규칙적으로 반짝 거리며 빛의 산란(散亂)을 이용해 공간과 조각, 관람자들에게 흥미로운 시지각 체험을 느끼게 한다. 이는 작품 표면의 특이한 울퉁불퉁함으로 말미암아 반영된 대상이 그 굴곡에 따라 일그러지거나 함몰과 돌출을 반복하며 반사된 광채 때문으로 이것은 분명 불쑥 찾아온 낯선 경험이다.

강한 금속은 어느새 새 생명의 덩어리에서 우리의 의식을 빨아드리는 에너지로 관람자를 유혹하게 될 것이다. 현실세계에 존재하는 우리는 작품이 발하는 마법의 공간 속으로 빨려 들어가는 흥미진진한 모험을 겪게 될 것이다.

                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                     2010. 5

 

 

 

The Shape of the Soul_ Yunbok Lee’s Recent Works

 

Kunio Motoe _Professor Tama Art University / Director Fuchu Art Museum

 

The movie I am Legend starring Will Smith is a story about the last person in New York, which has been quarantined because of a plague. He is a doctor who has to fight off the former residents the plague turned into violent zombies, zombies that only come out at night. This alone is enough to call it a scary movie, but the part of this largely nonsensical movie that really sends shivers down your spine are not the action scenes. There is a scene in which on one quiet afternoon in a store void of people, our hero talks to an uncomfortably realistic mannequin, one that seems as though it could start talking at any moment, it is indescribably eerie. Faced with this scene, we are speechless and helpless, not understanding why being in the same space as something in the shape of a fellow human can stir up such an unsettled feeling within us.

 

This is probably the first place we are confronted with the issue of the soul. Somewhere along the way I had the inappropriate thought that if a soul were to enter that empty shell of a finely crafted doll (I suddenly remember Pygmalion), she’d be a beautiful woman in the flesh. But what is this soul? Where is it? Nobody knows the answers to these questions. What we do know is that our souls are close to us, almost one with us, and like our faces or backs, they are not something we can look at directly. Souls do not reside in pieces of wood or stone. How can we catch something that appears unexpectedly with no way of knowing where it is? It is in this point that I for one, think the significance of Yunbok Lee’s work lies.

 

Actually, this is not the first time I have seen the kind of shape in one of Yunbok Lee’s works that seems to have a soul. Several years ago, at the Soh Gallery, when I saw a certain work of art with organic form bound by a metal sash, I felt as if I sensed a soul locked inside. In contrast, more recent works give the impression the souls are independent, and much more self-sufficient. Yet, it is not the shiny, hammered and beat stainless steel encapsulating empty space itself that is the soul, that is just its shape. Moreover, we must not forget that the essential thing here is the idea Laozi expounds, namely that “Things in existence that are beneficial, are so only because of nothingness” (有之以爲利、無之以爲用).

 

Incidentally, no matter how close the soul is to us, that does not mean it will show itself very readily. But that is exactly why Yunbok Lee says “Artworks are made on the border between the limits of mind and body. We go to sleep feeling the pain of the body, and so we awake.” And again, “…to me the process is a part of the artwork itself” (quoted from the artist’s notes). The soul always accompanies the dialogue and conflict of works that artists can refer to as pieces of themselves and at the same time entirely separate entities, affecting the materials as something almost non-existent. The accumulation and whole of these subtle events themselves, called “accidents” by the artist, are the tracks, traces, and signs of the soul. So that eventually the work of art, or “metaphor for the soul,” speaks to the hearts of those that look upon it.

 

Yunbok Lee’s works of bent steel polished like a mirror are all strangely human. That may be the reason we think we see our souls reflected in them.