John RAJCHMAN
KIM Wonbang
Ban Ejung
Lee Jinmyung

Lee Yongbaek :
Pursuing the Future of Hybrid Aesthetics

Ban Ejung | Art critic

In his introduction of The Language of New Media (2003), which has practically become the bible of Media Art, Lev Manovich calls “the desire to creatively place together the old and the new in various combinations” as the new, prevailing tendency found in the present day culture. Furthermore, he declares that the purpose of his research is to systematically investigate the new cultural forms driven by this hybrid aesthetics, for new media is, as he puts it, “in short, the remix between culture and computers.” New Folder- Drag (2007) produced by Lee Yongbaek, a Korean artist in mid-forties, is a massive folder-shaped structure made out of 400kg (Dupont’s) synthetic marble. This huge yellow folder is placed on a row of logs on the floor- the forefather of the modern wheels used by primitive mankind. Absurdly and ridiculously, the artist has ‘dragged’ a virtual zero-weight (an empty folder on the computer monitor ‘weighs’ 0 bite) folder from the monitor into the space and time in the real world. This nonsensical presence of the icon of the advanced information society which is placed on the log-wheel, the relics of the pre-civilization period, probably is a metaphor for the manipulated collision between the two cultures which would never physically converge otherwise. How should this juxtaposition between the past and the present lead on by the artist be interpreted? The video version of this installation exhibits the artist’s production techniques in which he reprocesses, utilizing different media, in various versions. Lee recorded a performance of a group of people dragging a model of a gigantic folder in China. Unlike a computer folder icon containing a tremendous amount of information that can be moved with a simple drag, the enormous folder appearing in the film is drawn by mules, the workforce of the old preindustrial economy, and local Chinese children. This unreasonable situation serves as a literal representation of “the remix between culture and computer.” Furthermore, the combination of a uselessly and absurdly inflated folder and Chinese manpower, in some sense, seems to parallel the reality of the third-world labor market. In other words, this piece could be regarded as an indirect reference to the phenomenon of cultural lag China is facing. Meanwhile, the mules are reminiscent of Lee’s earlier work, Artificial Emotion (2000), an installation designed to create an interaction between the audience and a stuffed ox through five respirators attached to the latter (when breathed through the respirator, the ox seems to recover breath, responding to the respirator). It also associates with Maurizio Cattelan’s The Ballad of Trotsky (1996) which suspended a horse from the ceiling of the exhibition space, or Damien Hirst’s series of dead mammals which have been presented in a glass box since 1990. However, while the works of Cattelan and Hirst aroused a great sensation in both the international art world and the public opinion (including vehement protests from animal rights groups), Lee’s Artificial Emotion did not seem to receive an enthusiastic response from the Korean art world. Instead, it proposed a sort of archetypal aesthetic logic to the artist, which he was to henceforth develop. On a makeshift table- or above the border- an ox as a symbol of the agricultural society lies ‘dead,’ creating ‘fake’ responses. In contrast, below it, an IBM’s then-latest model computer was running. In short, the work is structured to exhibit contrast between a dead animal and a living computer. This constitutes the first and vertical boundary; the second and horizontal one occurring between a lying ox and a human audience instilling breath into the ox. This interface between seemingly oppositional properties in Lee’s earlier work is repeated in his later works. Needless to say, this feature must be one of the effective keys to sum up Lee’s art.

There is a group of Lee’s works that evokes tension by dividing a unified entity into two conflicting elements and contrasting them. In terms of their function and semantics, they work as a mirror. Art critic Kim Wonbang observed that Lee is marked by creating “the collapse of binary opposition between the virtual and the real,” which was probably intended to indicate one of the aspects of the mirror effect. The effect created by the artist leads the audience to reflect on the duality of an identical object/phenomenon and for this purpose, he uses very familiar icons as a decoy. For example, Inbetween Buddha and Jesus (2002) takes the icons of the two representative religious leaders in the world, Pieta (2007)- the same title is also given to his large-scale sculpture- the time-honored religious icon in art history, and Narcissus (2008) the tale of Narcissus in Greek mythology. However, Lee’s mirror-work does not reflect things as they are. The case in which the artist took the advantage of the mirror effect most literally would be his early work Re·Re·Reflection (1999). Here he used digital printing technology to reverse the print of Vincent van Gogh’s portrait, which in itself was a reversed image of the painter reflected on a mirror, and thereby revealed the ‘truth’ (van Gogh’s cut-off ear was the left one!). While on the other hand, Mirror (2007-2008), a mirror installation in the earnest sense of the word which incorporated mirror as part of itself, attached a two-way mirror to a 42 inch LCD screen so as to create an optical illusion of cracks on the mirror. This was a result of repeated developments and transformations of its preliminary version presented as early as 1994. The most essential part of Mirror is the subtle twist between the reflective surface of the mirror and what is reflected on it. With the roaring sound of gunfire through the speaker, three realistic looking bullet holes appear on the monitor (which is in fact a high speed [50,000 fps] footage of a bullet passing through glass). The mirror is cracked, but nothing happens to those who look at the mirror out of it. The viewers see their cracked self reflected on the mirror surface which is ‘broken in one piece’- an experience to find oneself as projected on a seemingly broken mirror screen. This piece is associated with Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1981) by Maya Lin, the winning entry of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial design competition, in Washington, D.C. The names of hundreds of thousands of those who died during the war are inscribed on the monument made of polished black granite. The viewers find themselves overlapping those names and mirrored on the granite which is ‘reflective like a mirror.’ This is where the tragic beauty of Lin’s work comes in. The images of the viewers who are safe and sound or the survivors are cast upon the surface of the gravestone dense with the names of the war’s victims. Lee’s mirror works too was based on his wish to reorganize the unreal space which he had been thrown into after one of his friends became lost while Lee was studying in Germany. In folklores or superstitions, mirrors have been often described as a reflection of the soul and the spirit. This witty old saying may be very useful in understanding not only Lin’s memorial but also the aesthetic function of mirrors in Lee’s works.

Pieta (2008) and Narcissus (2008) also relate to the mirror effect, but in this case without use of mirrors. Both of the works are respectively modern day retellings of the long adored icon, the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of Jesus and the myth of Narcissus. Each pair of figures (Maria vs. Jesus and Narcissus vs. Narcissus’ reflection) is composed of a mold and the FRP molded product. Two different parts are created by splitting a single body into two. Narcissus, named after the well-known Greek mythological character, deals with the misfortune of self-absorption which is so deep as to be fascinated by his or her own reflection on the surface of water. In Pieta, the neutral skin of Maria made out of a lifeless mold forms a contrast to the pink glossy one of Jesus with sensual beauty like that of ball joint dolls. Though appropriating the posture in the famous masterpiece, Lee presents the mother and son as apathetic mannequin-like figures: the grieving mother seems to have no maternal affection and her dead son does not look pathetic, neither. This is a large-scale materialization of how the artist interprets the essence of the religious icons in contemporary culture.

Angel Soldier (2005) is one of his representative works which won him acclaim. The strength of this work lies in that it can be recasted in four different media: photography, performance, object art, and film. And these four versions can be regarded both as separate pieces and as an integrated unity. While it would be going too far to argue that Angel Soldier utilizes the mirror effect as well, it is still in an extension of Lee’s mirror aesthetics, for it combines conflicting elements and reflects the current issues in South Korean society. The figures in combat uniforms moving slowly, with a speed as slow as a slow-motion film, could be viewed as a sequel to Vaporized Things (Post IMF) (2002), in which a man in a dark suit, the modern white-collar worker’s uniform, slowly walks forward in deep water. Lee’s choice of ‘flower-guns’ rather than personal weapons, computer folders rather than unit patches, and computer program icons rather than military branch symbols perfectly correspond to the aesthetic genealogy of the artist who has constantly incorporated media culture in his works. The soldiers’ camouflage smock with a dazzling gaudy flower pattern foreshadows his painting Plastic Fish (2008). Both of them focus on the principle of disguise: the flowery camouflage in Angel Soldier disturbs the enemy and the baits in Plastic Fish lure fish. Considering the present situation of Korea, the only divided nation in the world, Angel Soldier contains elements of black comedy. The name tags of world-renowned Korean artists are attached on the flower pattern battle uniform, and the badges of military rank indicate the artists’ status in the art world. This is an allegory for the power hierarchy in the art scene. Lee is a short but solidly built man with a sun-burnt face and long, narrow eyes as if he is born of sculptors’ blood. His present studio looks like a factory, where all kinds of tools, painting implements, camera equipments, large speakers, new LCD monitors, etc. are jumbled together. On the wall hang rubbed copies of big fish he caught while sea fishing. The chronological record of his works which he created in this plant-like working space is as variegated as the number of fish imprinted on paper. Truly, this might be the future image of contemporary culture coupled with new media.