RECEPTION OF CONTRADICTIONS
AND ASSIMILATION OF EGO TO THE IMAGINARY WORLD
Sculpturing as Recollection and Recording Daily Experiences
Tai-Man Choi/Art Critic
The hypothesis of perceptual psychology that seeing is having suggests that possession is closely related to memories. An artist's memories are made up of the circumstances under which he grew up, his experiences in society, and events specially impressive to him. They may seem to be an accumulation of discontinuous and superficial fragments or have imperfect structures, but actually there is among them an internal connection with considered logical links. Accordingly, it is certain that a particular time and space play important roles in each memory.
The works by Yong Deok Lee, produce a meditative atmosphere in that "memories" in his sculpturing is a record of time and space in this sense and, furthermore, is the capturing of special information engraved in the memory factors and latent desires. The world which he is trying to embody, however, necessarily calls for a lot of speculations and interpretations and tend to lead us to confusion and puzzlement as well in that it is not a mere record of the physical aspects of a particular event but aims at the complex and multi-tiered structures of meaning. Despite this, we cannot fail to notice that he created new spectacles by piecing together and restructuring his discontinuous memories of the past in a very subtle and careful manner, as if he were playing a cubic game. Among the records of his memories to which he gave new shapes by reconstructing through the elicitation process what particularly interested and excited him, and drew his attention are [Rome], which embodies the strong stimulus and impression during his tour of Europe, in particular during his visit to Rome, in a monumental form; [Attraction of the Olympics], in which the upper half of a robust muscular man and number 1988 remind us of the Seoul Olympic Games, which drove the whole nation into a trance of group unconsciousness; [Father's Village], which expresses a dream about a secret journey into a quite private and imaginary world. These works may be said to be active reorganizations of information, namely, recollections of memories, based on the artist's personal experiences. In contrast to then are the works like [For Agatha Christie], [Modern History of Korea], and [Man of Taegeuk]. They may be considered to be created by a kind of unconscious attachment to much more conceptualized "made-up memories" which developed into a critical mind by his experiences, attitude, and inclination as a result of the long-standing influence of education, social customs, etc, and of his memories undergoing simplification, addition, elimination and distortion over the time.
Projection plays a very important role as a device assisting in the images which are stored in
an artist's memory, whether it is an elicitation of memories from his unique personal experience or from an abyss of desires which are latent over there in consciousness. We need to direct our attention to the fact that, for Yong Deok Lee, projection is a medium through which he gives meanings to the figures made visible by creating and assembling.
For instance, the signifiant of the title [Rome] is a particular city, but the structure of the work suggests its signifie hidden in the signiflant. The title of Rome is a clue for drawing out a particular memory of his European tour from a large stock of information. It should be home in mind that it is a manifest record of a memory but its accumulative and assembled structure, beyond the impression of the city of Rome, makes statements about the historical and social meanings which the city evokes.
Pieta and the stairs, and a horse in relief are figures not related to each other but make us think of certain monuments of the Roman Empire. The artist makes the whole work into a world of imaginary figures by projecting his memories of Rome into the figures independently created, and re-projects the city into it. This work is a miniature monument and, at the same time, a combination of relief and intaglio reflects the artist's sensory (perceptual) response to the historical fact of the rise and fall of the Empire.
The work represents a momentary scenes which was made motionless by the use of the same material and by the space occupied by the figures, yet the seriousness of each character which reminds us of a stage setting and an actor's acting shows that it has a plot line a play or a movie and is intended to produce an effect of requiring continuous movement in the flew of time. The image of wall which he always introduces into his works to highlight these elements of drama is like a stage which is a condensed expression of a particular situation, and leads viewers to evoke their imagination.
In short, the wall has a dual structure of meaning. In his work, it associates us with psychological exclusion, seclusion, isolation, confinement and veils on the one hand, and represents protection from exposure, concealment and repose on the other hand. Moreover, it is at once a stage setting to attract viewers' attention and a symbol for the deal to keep some distance from them.
Reception of Contradiction
The sculptures which reproduce reality necessarily admit of numerous interpretations. His techniques of creating (modeling) and piecing together he adopts the technique of inserting independent works into the situation of another work are factors which requires the literary interpretation of his works, and leaves room for multiple interpretations of them. Of course, it is the viewer who chooses one interpretation consistent with his expectation out of many possible ones.
The proper combination of relief(positive) and intaglio(negative) is intended for optical illusion and the contrast produces a trike effect in such works as [Tenacity of Lady], [Taking a
Break], and [Emancipation of Ego], bringing the viewers great enjoyment. In [Taking a Break], in which a man is sitting against the wall exhausted and absentminded, for example, the upper half is modeled in negative intaglio within the wall and the lower part from elbows is modeled in positive relief. If we look at it at a distance with half-closed eyes, it looks as if it were modeled in the full round. This optical illusion makes us realize how much the sense of our eyes accustomed to conventions-the prejudice that sculptures must be three·dimensional-narrows down the scope of expression. In addition to providing visual enjoyment, the combination of relief and intaglio reveals the speculative nature of his works, since it stands for the harmony and unity of Yin and Yang, the fundamental notions of Oriental thoughts. Given the theme of this exhibition, reception of contradiction, we can see the world view running through his works. The opposites like subject and object good and evil, truth and hypocrisy, life and death, inside and outside, light and darkness, man and woman are the axes of the world. They are also bases upon which this world is seen, grasped, analyzed, and interpreted. Just as completeness cannot exist without incompleteness, a full understanding of reality is possible only when these contradictory and opposite elements come into unity. Yong Deok Lee pursues the active reception of the opposition. For him, the acceptance of life is the reception of contradictions and it does not merely mean passive avoidance or abandonment. On the contrary, the reception of contradictions should be understood to be a course to unity and to 'oneness' in Yin-Yang philosophy. It is because of the self-assimilation to this relativity that his works seem very speculative in some respects. The duality which is clearly seen in his work Emancipation of Ego is the confession of his self-consciousness and his complex multi-tiered mental state in which internal contradiction and conflict, delight and anger, pleasure and despair coexist. It also awaken us in a whisper to the fact that we can arrive at an exact understanding of our self only when we can accept even the aggressive human nature deep down in our unconsciousness.