Sculpture That Extracts a Moment, The Original Copy
Kwon Hyukgue (Curator)
Time is nothing but a lie. Today, time lowers countless barriers, channeling desires for the past or future into the “here and now”and collapsing nearly everything into the present moment. In a world where everything is transformed into data, human emotions, perceptions, and even the physical foundations beneath us are crushed, dismantled, and reassembled as data packets. Time and experience are now mediated solely by ceaselessly uploaded images and the networks they form.
In this reality, “perceiving” time becomes a formidable task. Time forgets itself, fading into oblivion. There is little room for contemplation, no space to imagine resistance. “Today” feels like an unscripted film, an endless sequence of scenes unfolding relentlessly in the present. This recalls Rem Koolhaas's description of the contemporary city as a kind of junk space, stripped of history and context, where “the terminal form of public activity” is reduced to shopping.[1] In such moments, one cannot help but question whether time has halted history, reducing everything to units of capital. Is there anything left for us beyond being mere“wise consumers”? Can we still extract meaning from time as it endlessly folds into itself, like a seamless Mobius strip?
Some might envision the rupture—a moment of breaking away from the present. They may long for a capital-H History, yearning for tangible time—multiple temporalities that foster meaningful connections. Paradoxically, true contemporaneity may not be found in either full conformity with or outright opposition to the presentist lie of time. Instead, it may begin by forming “relationships that cling to the era through disjunctions and anachronisms” or “connections that deliberately refuse to fully align with the present.”[2]
These desires and contradictions resonate with Lee Yong Deok’s concept of Inverted Sculpture (易像彫刻). Coined to describe his distinctive approach to sculpture, Inverted Sculpture subverts what appears to be conventional reliefs, transforming them into concave forms. Lee’s sculptures often depict familiar figures and mundane scenes, yet at certain angles, they reveal unexpected concavity. The sculpture generates a cognitive experience in which convex and concave, interior and exterior, shift depending on the viewer’s perspective and distance. As the viewer moves, the forms appear to change—at times even creating the illusion of motion. This interplay of inversion and disappearance transcends mere visual trickery, offering a sculptural and material attitude that invites contemplation on the nature of time.
This essay examines Lee Yong Deok’s sculptures as an attempt to “perceive” time. It questions whether Lee’s exploration of concave and convex forms, along with his ongoing sculptural experiments, constitutes an effort to materialize temporal “relationships.” Building on this inquiry, it explores how Lee’s Inverted Sculptures, as they have evolved to the present day, depict scenes of disparate temporalities and time gaps. It also considers whether, by capturing fleeting moments that might otherwise dissipate, these works resist simply replacing one present with another, instead rendering the past and future as tangible, relational presences.
1. Material that Gathers Moments: Photograph or Sculpture
Lee Yong Deok’s solo exhibition, “The Persistence of the Moment: THE MOMENT NOT A MOMENT” (2024), probes the paradoxes and ironies of contemporaneity, shaped by temporal disjunctions and the “lie of time.” The exhibition’s title, which references “the moment,” simultaneously gestures toward its inversion and collision—“not a moment”—alluding to time that is shed, delayed, and sustained. How, then, does the captured moment persist as material? How are multiple temporalities formed, offering an alternative to the endless present?
Examining Lee’s process begins with the "gathering" of moments.[3] Images and textual information uploaded in real time deliver a new present in the blink of an eye. Gazing at the past is immediately interrupted, and imagining or awaiting the future is similarly obstructed. At this juncture, Lee intervenes, puncturing holes in the barriers of time. Before creating his sculptures, he observes his surroundings, capturing situations and objects that arrest his gaze. Sometimes, he selects stills from films, magazine spreads, or online sources. These photographic images occupy a unique temporal position—quasi-present, semi-present, or non-present moments. As noted earlier, these gathered moments transform into material: fragments of the past persisting into the future.
Photographs are generally considered to be more closely tied to reality than (images or materials produced through) other media, making them more accurate in capturing the present or the moment. Even with today’s advanced technologies, photography retains the promise of directly sharing experience as an image, seemingly unmediated by interpretation. Susan Sontag described photography as “privileging the moment, turning it into a thin object that can be kept and revisited over and over.”[4] Her insight highlights not photography’s fidelity to reality, but its ability to “turn time into an object.” Similarly, Lee’s photographic process transcends mere depiction. He gathers these “thin objects” (photographic images) of time, using them as raw material to re-materialize moments into sculpture. Here, the moment is no longer a moment—The Moment, Not a Moment—transformed into pliable, fragmented, and tangible material.
Lee’s description of the first stage of his work as “gathering” is especially meaningful. For him, selecting motifs resembles collecting—or even hunting. Yet this act is not hierarchical or structured as a dominant-subordinate relationship, but rather interactive and mutually responsive. The process of “materializing a scene where curiosity arrests the gaze” involves selecting and hunting while simultaneously being selected and hunted in return. Roland Barthes’s concept of punctum—a “pricking” sensation or involuntary emotional encounter with a photograph—is relevant here. Barthes likened punctum to a wound or stain, capturing the deeply personal, subjective experience of being captivated by an image.[5] Similarly, Lee’s photographic process highlights the reciprocal dynamics between the medium and its subjects, laying the foundation for his sculptural exploration.
This interrelational dynamic forms the basis for deconstructing and expanding the present moment in Lee’s sculptural process. He does not merely take photographs; he selects and manipulates them afterward. Using image-editing software, he alters backgrounds, places figures in different contexts, or removes distinguishing features to anonymize them. At times, he repeats the same figure across different settings, constructing entirely new scenarios. The initial stage of selecting sculptural motifs from photographs involves exploring the moment and materiality, the present and its persistence, while actively shifting between objectivity and subjectivity, data and interpretation, reflection and manipulation, and fact and illusion (or falsehood). This process, in turn, reveals that the photographs within Lee’s work—these materialized images—are not transparent reflections of the subject or moment from the outset.
In conclusion, Lee Yong Deok’s use of photography as the starting point for his sculptural process is both an effort to directly capture and materialize a specific moment and an interrelational act—deeply personal yet inherently connected to the subject and the time it reflects. This approach continually fosters the potential for expansion, reconfiguration, delay, and continuity within his Inverted Sculptures. Unlike monumental sculptures, which often serve as absolute symbols, Inverted Sculptures, much like photographs, simultaneously reference and evoke past moments or subjects while inviting an ongoing sensory engagement.
2. The Perception of Transfer, the Transfer of Perception
If Inverted Sculptures allow us to recover a sense of time, or even to confront and imagine multiple temporalities, it is because the works themselves inherently open up multidimensional possibilities for perception. This becomes clearer when examining the sculptural process, which the artist refers to as “transfer.”
As previously discussed, the artist begins by "gathering" moments through photographic images before proceeding to create three-dimensional works. These gathered images are then materialized into sculptural forms through a process the artist describes as creating "semi-sculptures." While this process resembles what is commonly referred to as "relief"—a form in which shapes project outward from a flat background—the artist refrains from using the term because its purpose differs fundamentally. The semi-sculptures, typically crafted from clay or oil-based modeling clay, then undergo a casting process using fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) or plaster. During this stage, the semi-sculptures themselves disappear. Following the sequence of the process, once the voluminous sculptural form is created, a mold is made as its shell. This mold, where the positive relief is inverted, gives rise to the “Inverted Sculpture.” In essence, the semi-sculptures serve as the "backside" of the Inverted Sculpture, as the artist puts it. Since the mold-making process defines the Inverted Sculpture, the semi-sculptures are merely a transitional stage—or a void. For example, the artist describes the process of creating semi-sculptures and their molds as "working from the back." This reflects how, during the creation of the semi-sculptures, the artist sculpts with the eventual inversion in mind, fully anticipating that these forms will later be turned inside out.
In these works, time and its perception undergo multidimensional transfers. First, a two-dimensional photographic image undergoes an initial shift as it materializes a moment in the present. Next, it transitions into a three-dimensional sculptural form. Elements such as light, shadow, and color—once confined to the photograph’s flat surface—transform into tangible thickness within the sculptural form. This process is further refined “from the back,” with the eventual inversion always in mind.
For the transformation into an inverted sculpture, yet another transfer is required. The positive form is inverted into a negative, creating a deepened space that reacts to light. This fundamental shift allows the sculpture’s interior to generate its own interplay of bright and dark shadows, depending on the lighting conditions. Through this process, the element of light—which was redirected or diminished during the transition from plane to volume—is once again brought into focus. The artist further amplifies spatial depth, context, light, and shadow through additional coloring, heightening the sculptural effect. In this way, the present moment the artist sought to capture and “gather” undergoes multiple transfers, transformations, and diversifications within the sculptural form, ultimately creating a “persistence of the moment.”
The transfer of perception is also repeatedly observed in the viewer’s experience of Inverted Sculpture. When standing before the work, the viewer experiences several layers of complex perceptual shifts. Initially, the form of the work appears as a singular shape, leaning closer to an illusion. Only after a moment—after allowing time to pass—does the viewer notice the inwardly recessed spatial depth. (Interestingly, in photographs of the work, the concavity of the sculpture is not readily apparent.) The viewer engages with the piece as if examining a negative film in a darkroom—reversing, processing, and imagining the image. While the subject remains identifiable, the usual way of seeing is disrupted, compelling the viewer to engage differently. They move around the sculpture, exploring its inner spatiality, depth, and the interplay of light and color, sometimes even succumbing to the illusion that the stationary sculpture is in motion.
Thus, the sculpture appears dynamic. However, it is not the sculpture that moves, but the viewer. The sculpture is already complete, unalterable, and incapable of suddenly shifting, protruding, or receding. In this context, viewing is not merely a visual act of “seeing” but something closer to “touching,” “connecting,” or “relating” at a specific moment. We exchange time with Inverted Sculpture: the artist’s present becomes the past, the viewer’s present encounters that past, and the past secures its place within a future still in formation.
From both the production and reception perspectives, Inverted Sculpture raises the complex issue of time as a multilayered sensory experience. To reiterate, Inverted Sculpture is neither a mimetic replication nor a simple materialization of a subject or moment. Instead, it embodies a dynamic interplay: the protruding and the recessed, ordinary scenes and extraordinary events, static objects and the illusion of movement—all coexist within the sculpture. If there is a present moment in which the viewer observes the tangible material before them, it is accompanied by a preceding moment that is felt—almost like a “pricking”sensation. The viewer is compelled to draw closer to this sensation, reversing or reinterpreting it as they engage with the work.
3. The Materiality of Absence
Despite being a tangible material object—a sculpture firmly present—Inverted Sculpture evokes a sense of absence and disappearance. As previously discussed, the sculpture that stands before the viewer retains traces of something no longer there, something that “once existed.” (As is known, the "semi-sculpture" painstakingly constructed by the artist during the process, no longer exists as an independent form, as it was never meant to function as a complete work in itself.) The hollow spaces within Inverted Sculpture reference the protruding forms that once existed, simultaneously pointing to their disappearance. Ultimately, the work embodies what is absent—a material form that holds within it what has vanished. This interplay, or inversion, of presence and absence imbues Inverted Sculpture with an almost primordial sense of magical illusion.
In terms of presence, Inverted Sculpture evokes the absence of unknown situations, vanished events, or figures. It appears to occupy a hollow space filled with something akin to time—perhaps the past or future—or unresolved mysteries destined to remain unsolved. The moment when an image, separated from its reality, emerges as a materialized sculpture is not merely a state of nothingness or disappearance. Instead, it embodies a duality, simultaneously evoking presence and absence, being and non-being.
The aforementioned "materiality of absence," which signifies both presence and absence, has long held a significant place in Lee Yong Deok’s artistic practice. His human body sculptures from the 1980s, for instance, featured sections of the human form carved out, leaving behind traces—as if something had been removed. These works suggested a presence more strongly perceived through its disappearance, much like the ghostly effect of photography. To reference Barthes again, he asserted that a photograph occupies an interstitial status, capturing something that is no longer present yet once existed in that past moment.[6] Similarly, Inverted Sculpture exists as an interstitial being—a state between presence and absence. The absence evoked by these distinctly material sculptures can also be understood through a photographic ontology: something that was once there, but is no longer.
In fact, some of Lee Yong Deok’s early works involved sculpting figures captured in photographs—figures that no longer exist in the present. Among these, his piece kl.k.7d.24.10.1920 berlin (1995), created during his time studying in Germany, visualizes the tension between presence and absence while engaging with historical dimensions.[7] Lee’s process began with a single photograph he discovered at a flea market: a group portrait of male students taken at a German school in 1920. Reflecting on the lives of these boys, Lee envisioned their eventual conscription into the German military and their entanglement in the tragedies of World War II.
By contemplating the layered temporality of the photograph—the connection between the figures in the image and different points in time—Lee sought to materialize the photographic dimensions of time and existence. In sculpting each boy from the photograph as a life-size figure, Lee overlaid the physical presence of sculpture with the ghostly quality of photography.
Photography inherently contains the absence of what once existed, along with the countless instances of presence and absence that have unfolded between the moment the photograph was taken and the moment the artist views it. Rather than letting the evanescent past embedded in a present image fade into obscurity, photography invites contemplation of another layer of time, history, and existence beyond it. Perhaps Lee Yong Deok sought to affirm this idea through the materiality of sculpture. Lee’s works, including kl. k. 7d. 24.10.1920 berlin and the pieces featured in “The Persistence of the Moment: THE MOMENT NOT A MOMENT,” serve as key reference points for understanding his Inverted Sculptures. They explore the multiplicity of time: a single moment in the past, the present of that past, the now-absent present, and the absence materialized in the here and now.
Another example is Lee’s recent works, in which metallic or wooden rods are layered to create the silhouette of a form. These pieces evoke a digital sensibility of modular aggregation. However, the rods do not merely function as modules constructing a singular form. Instead, they impart a sense of movement to the initially perceived shape—or even disperse the form entirely. As viewers approach or step back from the work, they notice that the rods forming the shape are subtly misaligned. While stacked at seemingly regular intervals, like bars of a grille, their precisely calculated misalignment is intentional. From different angles, the shape quickly appears to distort or dissolve. The slight deviations in the arrangement of the rods reshape light and shadow, further obstructing the viewer’s comprehension of the form. The experience of observing the sculpture must then be reconstructed over time. As the artist states, “A moment once present in the past persists through the traces of empty space.” At its core, the temporality evoked by Inverted Sculpture is both present and expanding.
4. Original Copy
Today, the experience of visiting an exhibition or viewing a work of art is often reduced to just another fragmented piece of information—one among countless other temporal experiences. Artworks and exhibitions are continuously uploaded to networks, where they are encountered primarily as easily accessible photographs on social media. Not only do casually taken smartphone photos stand in for the physical experience of a work’s presence, but the proliferation of these photographic images transcends conventional notions of time and space, taking on a life of their own.
However, as previously discussed, the experience of Lee Yong Deok’s sculptures is rooted in the physical encounter with the materiality of absence and the transfer of perception—something that cannot be fully captured in photographs. While Lee’s sculptures may operate photographically (in a way akin to the ontological status of photography) and may originate from photographic sources, his works cannot be reduced to static images. His sculptures resist confinement within photographic representation. The illusion of movement experienced when engaging with an Inverted Sculpture, the spatial depth that evokes imaginative possibilities, and the sensory interplay that demands both passive reception and active subjective involvement—all of these aspects elude the frame of a camera.
When photographed head-on, an Inverted Sculpture appears convex rather than concave, flattening its three-dimensional depth into a plane with shadow effects. For this reason, online images of Lee Yong Deok’s sculptures often depict hands or faces inserted into the hollowed interior. Without such cues, the essence of his work cannot be fully conveyed in photographs. The illusionary effects of these sculptures, when experienced in physical space, allow for the perception of temporal persistence; however, the illusion captured by a camera does not permit such a sense of duration.
Amid the inescapable flood of replicated images and the false temporality woven solely into the present, how can the act of preserving and sustaining a moment be understood? Lee Yong Deok’s sculptures can be described as a kind of “original copy”—photographic in nature, yet resisting reduction to infinitely replicable images. Inverted Sculpture gathers moments, condenses the complex interplay of past, present, and future, and materializes these temporal relationships, ensuring they are never flattened into mere representation. As a singular material form, the “original copy” offers viewers an opportunity to perceive the past moment and the evaporating present in a subtly different way.
In Lee Yong Deok’s Inverted Sculptures, time intersects in multidimensional ways. The process begins with moments that are both captured and manipulated, moves into an intermediary phase where past and future moments are “sculpted from behind,” and culminates in the completed sculpture—a present yet ghostly space. These stages sensorially interconnect the multiplicity of temporal relationships. This approach neither monumentalizes time nor reduces it to a fragmented presentism. Instead, it seeks to envision connections—points of contact and engagement—rooted in impermanence and variability.
Lee Yong Deok’s Inverted Sculptures can be understood as oscillations between manifestation and disintegration—or as the materialization of such attempts. They embody the paradox of being both a moment and not a moment, a tangible material yet a mirage-like form that seems to vanish. The works reveal a world in motion while serving as materials that mediate the pliability of time. The artist assumes the present as a mutable subject, capturing, processing, and materializing moments to present Inverted Sculpture as a hybrid relationship with time. Here, the sculpture becomes both an image and a material presence, existing simultaneously as presence and absence.
In these sculptures, light and space, presence and absence coexist, creating a mysterious interplay of forms and figures that emerge, invert, and disappear—never fully graspable at once. Tangible material merges with a mirage-like quality, revealing forms that are both fleeting and substantial. The relational dynamics of time—both a moment and not a moment—become visible. At the boundary between mold and model, the artist explores the ontological movement between presence and absence. Through this process, temporality is materialized, transforming time into something both perceptible and elusive. The viewer’s direct engagement with these works proposes a relationship with reality that transcends the flood of presentified images. By understanding Inverted Sculpture as a process of gathering time—extracting and embodying moments, sustaining or repeating them—an “original copy”—one may begin to perceive a contemporary temporality that resists simple definitions, unfolding as a layered, multidimensional experience.
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About the Contributor :
Kwon Hyukgue is a curator and writer based in Seoul, Korea. He received his PhD in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London. His interests lie in curatorial methodologies that transform indeterminate scenes into physical presences. He was the co-director of the curator-run platform WESS (2019-2023), and currently serves as the chief curator of Museumhead (2020-present), where he curated the exhibitions Injury Time (2021), Monumental (2023), and B/W Signals (2024). He also curates and edits the annual publication project Newspaper.
[1] See Rem Koolhaas et al., Project on the City II: The Harvard Guide to Shopping (Cologne: Taschen, 2002).
[2] Giorgio Agamben, “What Is the Contemporary?” in Jangchirang Mueosinga? Jangchihak-eul Wihan Siron [What Is an Apparatus? An Essay for the Study of Apparatuses], trans. Yang Chang-ryeol (Seoul: Nanjang, 2010), 72.
[3] All subsequent quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the artist’s interview. Interview with the artist, 2024.
[4] Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave,” in On Photography, trans. Lee Jae-won (Seoul: Ihu, 2005), 39.
[5] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Kim Woong-kwon (Seoul: Dongmunseon, 2006), 57–67.
[6] Barthes approaches the ontological state of photography as “having been there” (interfuit). Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Kim Woong-kwon (Seoul: Dongmunseon, 2006), 99.
[7] The artist’s perspective on participatory art (engagement) and realism can be understood in relation to this historical awareness.