Lee Yong Deok artist’s note
2010
Essay
One sees a relief painting that entices and invites him, to draw the observer‟s tentative footsteps towards the image of figures. These figures are trapped in mid-motion, tinged with solitariness; with a rather surrealistic hue. Some are blanching white, some with a bluish pallor, or sometimes in pronounced scarlet. As one approaches nearer towards the figure-sculpture, one‟s heart throbs to find that the figures are not protruding, but concaving inwards; it is an enchanting illusion that could be taken as a congratulatory gift from the artist, Lee Yong Deok, for the small achievement on the viewer‟s part that he has finally stumbled across the beauty and the prowess of Lee‟s sculptures.
The pith of Lee‟s idea in his sculptures is “time transportation”. Images of real life, that he has encountered and observed, are tranferred to the present in the form of his sculptures. The images had resided either in memory or on a photo. In order to make this transfer possible, a perceptive technique called “severance” is necessary. One has to call a halt, and „sever‟ the connection to time and space. When transferred, the images might just be representations of static cross-sections at that “severing” moment.
Lee, however, magically restores the images of real existence in their full vibrancy. Their movements, postures, and expressions are all magnanimous incarnation of real-life personages beautifully transferred onto the sculptures. They are walking, leaning against the wall or sitting with their hands clasped around the knees, with such detached ambience that they dissociate their self-consciousness from the observer‟s scrutiny. There is a delicious mixture of almost tangible languor and equanimity. For one of his compelling works, an old photo taken just after the First World War in Germany of 33 boys in a classroom, was transferred into 33 terracotta boys, with each head cast in plaster. Lee shows how intensively he engaged his imagination in envisaging each boy‟s disturbed, perplexed, fragile little hearts. Lee sees more than what is just there. This transcendental perception is Lee‟s very Magnum Opus.