Sample of artist bios written for The Baer Faxt Seoul City Guide
Lee Ufan (b. 1936)
Lee Ufan’s practice focuses not on creating something new, but revealing the hidden nature of the existing world. In his long-running “Relatum” series, he examines the relationship between art object, viewer, and space by placing large stones in relation to mirrors, iron plates, or monochrome canvases. His signature paintings, though seemingly simple rows of individual strokes, require meditative breathing to achieve the effect of smooth, consistent gestures. In April, Lee Ufan opened a museum dedicated to his art in the old quarter of Arles across three floors of the Hôtel Vernon, his third museum alongside those in Naoshima, Japan, and Busan, South Korea. Elsewhere in Arles, his “Requiem” of 13 Relatum stone installations at the Alyscamps Roman necropolis runs through Sept. 30. In Tokyo, a retrospective of his work opened this month to commemorate the National Art Center’s 15th anniversary. He is jointly represented by Pace and Lisson galleries.
Lee Bul (b. 1964)
Lee Bul works mainly in large-scale sculptural installations, often accompanied by performances. She uses metallic, futuristic constructions as a mirror for the aspirations and failures of contemporary society, especially critiquing misogyny and politics surrounding women’s bodies. For Lee Bul, technological obsessions tend to reveal the human desire to escape or modify the body in pursuit of immortality. She was included in the 1999 Venice Biennale and was honored with major solo exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2015 and at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2021. Lehmann Maupin is showing her work at Frieze Seoul.
Anicka Yi (b. 1971)
Born in Seoul and raised in the U.S., Anicka Yi frequently collaborates with scientists to create sculpture incorporating cutting-edge technology, scents, and references to biology, completing a residency at MIT in 2015. Her meditations on microbial life often cut into the relationship between odors, misogyny, and racism. Yi reached international acclaim with her inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. She is represented by 47 Canal and Gladstone Gallery, which presented a solo exhibition of her work in Seoul in June. Yi also received a retrospective, titled “Metaspore,” this summer at Milan’s Pirelli Hangarbicocca, and also just released a TED talk.
