Contradictions in Harmony
James, Chu Cheok Son Curator of the Exhibition/ Macao Museum of Art
Modern bustling cities are crowded with people rushing back and forth. A few might on occasion stand still for a while to observe the multi‐faceted life styles of the city dwellers by their facial expressions, clothes or appearances. Most people, however, just hurry along the crowded streets, brushing past other people. The sculptor Lee Yong-Deok is one of the former. With his keen and exquisite sense of observation, he admires the graceful vigor of life expressed by men and women walking down the streets. The enchanting beauty of their muscular movements that bring about the heaving and weaving of clothing never fails to capture his attention. In the eyes of the artist, it is all beauty, irrespective of whether the subject is walking, sitting or running; and irrespective of their sex, age or appearance.
Painters use canvas and pigments to depict scenes from actual life. Photographers capture unforgettable moments with a lens through light and shadow. The sculptor, for his part,
uses three-dimensional shapes to show the relationship between material objects and space, and thereby reveal the existence of three-dimensional beauty. Sculpture has maintained its unique significance since ancient times. Sculptures of different periods share a common feature – they re-enact the spiritual aspect of humankind’s development. The sculptures of the primitive society reveal the livelihood, beliefs and experience towards life of prehistoric man. The pantheon of gods in Greek myths is actually an epitome of human nature and social values. Greek artists applied the appearance, character, and sentiments of humans to imagined gods, and portray an idealized nature. The sculptures of the Roman period focused on propagating the authority of the empire and stressed practicality and utilitarianism. The depiction of movements, postures, expressions, clothing, hairstyles and weapons all aimed to highlight dignity, emphasizing the majestic forms and luxurious decorations. While the works of Lee Yong-Deok succeed this classical pursuit of harmony between human and nature, they are nevertheless closer to the humanism of the Renaissance in that they reveal the artist’s optimism and confidence towards life as well as his enjoyment.
Viewing the works of Lee Yong-Deok is just like reading detective novels about Sherlock Holmes: when moving from ‘superficial facts’ to thoughts and reconstructions of reality, personal subjectivity and analytic logic must be discarded. The artist presents familiar three‐dimensional objects to the audience by using an inverted presentation, and through his works, he plays a psychological game of visual illusion with viewers – just like the way the illustrations of M. C. Esther lead the viewers into an imaginary world of visual illusion.
What is most captivating about the inverted sculptures of Lee Yong-Deok is the surprise and amazement the audience will experience as they go beyond their initial impression of the works to discover that their understanding of ‘fact’ was just another falsified casual
judgment of their conscious. In the process, the audience’s perception of space quickly vanishes and then questions the works from the reality. For the viewers, such unconscious involvement leads to a more profound comprehension of the spatial sense of the sculptures. The artist asks, “Is what I see fact? Is what I am feeling through my sense of touch indeed fact? Is what I am able to perceive fact?”
In the past, many sculptors have attempted to explore the negative space. Russian artist Alexander Archipenko (1887‐1964) employed the inverted form to express the convex parts of the human body and used transparent materials to change the belief that sculptures are indispensably constructed with mass and enclosure, which generated an important influence in the subsequent history of sculpture. Going one step further, the works of Lee Yong-Deok pursue truthfulness in both his thinking and creation, and suggest a new perception of the relationship between sculptures and space. Although they are not the three‐dimensional sculptures we are familiar with, they represent the fruits of exploration into the space around sculptures by the expression of the convex effect with inverted forms. This is precisely what the artist understands as ‘composition’: “In nature, things are not composed unitarily. In an integrated structure, it is inevitable that human judgment enables the coexistence of contradictions.”
The appreciation of Lee Yong-Deok’s works requires multi‐perspective thinking. The selected subjects are simple and natural. Even if we set aside his unique use of sculpture techniques, his works display a lively, natural and unpretentious visual effect that embellishes his complete works, including pigmentation, mounting and exhibition, without any deafening clamor. The artist uses a sculptural technique to emphasize the transposition of space and physical objects so that space is deemed as a physical object and the work becomes a part of it. This reversed concept of sculptural space is similar to the stress Auguste Rodin (1840‐1917) places on formal elements. Rodin advocated a depth‐based conception of form, where appearance is determined in a sketch through the sense of depth rather than the external contour of lines.
In the first chapter of the Book of Tao, Laozi says: “Nothingness is the origin of heaven and Earth; Being is the Mother of All Things. From ‘Non‐Being’, we see the subtlety of their essences; from ‘Being’, we see the splendor of their diversity. They come from the mystery of the same reality, but with different names.” Laozi believed that Being exists in Nothingness. If the principle of Nothingness was understood, humankind would imagine the constant changes of the universe with a simple and modest attitude. In the works of Lee Yong-Deok, positive and negative, presence and absence, the virtual and the physical are constituted in a symphony of contradictions in harmony.
When I first saw the works of Lee Yong-Deok in the cavernous exhibition venue of the 2004 Shanghai Art Fair, it was like a breath of fresh air. His pithy works made a lasting impression.
Later, by coincidence, I got to know someone from PYO Gallery, and after a while, better understood Lee’s background, his creative ideas and his works.
Last year, I discovered that Lee would hold a solo exhibition in Beijing. The idea of bringing his exhibition to Macao came to my mind immediately. Art development in Macao is not flourishing and pales to insignificance compared to the gambling industry, which outshines all others. The level of the city’s creativity has been moribund for years, especially in the realm of sculpture, and the realism style of the older generation does not gel with the modern world. The new generation that have studied in the School of Art are still inexperienced, and the lack of space in the territory also hinders development. Seen from another perspective, one might say that the residents of Macao are generally more simple and innocent for here every individual who engages in art is not terribly critical. Their buoyant and content attitude, however, is not beneficial to the development of local art although it is surely more desirable and better than the big city life, which is tricky and
disturbing. Lee’s city scenes are always natural and approachable, which gives the impression that his works are animated, not commercial and culturally aggressive from the result of globalization. Through superb techniques, his friendly materials strongly attract.
After the exhibition inauguration, groups of residents, tourists and especially young students, doubted local news reports and came to see the exhibition for themselves. Subsequently, visitors praised Lee’s creations and even expressed their gratitude to the Macao Museum of Art for bringing his work here. As an exhibition curator, observing
audiences view their own shadows on the walls in the ‘Shadow Room’, their cheerful mood and genuine good humour reaffirmed to me that the power of exciting art lies in its simplicity. When I saw happy visitors leaving the museum, I recalled the kind and gentle visage of Professor Lee; a face that has a pacifying effect on people. Truly, this is a reward beyond money and materials.