Lee Yong Deok artist’s note
2011

kl. k. 7d. 24. 10. 1920, Berlin
“In the autumn of 1994, I found in a flea market in Berlin an old photo of 33 boys taken in 1920

…just after the First World War in Germany…

It was a class photo of first graders in an elementary school, and on the back of the photo, were the last names of all the boys written.

… in that photo they would have been 6-7 years old, and by now they are probably around in their mid-eighties…”


The above is the usual opening sentences that I use on explaining my work, ‘kl. k. 7d. 24. 10. 1920, Berlin’ (1995), which was shown at the Invitation Exhibition of the Berlin municipal art centre, Schulmuseum. It is a figuration of the 33 boys from the photo in terra cotta, with each of the boys’ heads casted in plaster. In a certain circumstance, the opening sentences may read like a journal entry of a particular day, except for the first few words, ’In the autumn of 1994’ – unless the diary-keeper, with a clumsy sense of humour, is trying to be dramatic about the event of his or her life. However, the paragraph above looks unusual, because there are those words that I put in bold. These words, strictly speaking, are not about the photo itself, but about the surrounding aura of the photo. In other words, those particular words are the ingredients that were edited with a sense of time and empathy. And consequently the edited infused layers of associations arise into prose. I would not be surprised if anyone had the cheek of presenting this kind of text as art work. I can say that the work, ’kl. k. 7d. 24.10. 1920, Berlin’, is the materialization of the edited text above; it is the transference of the photographic pause and death onto the genre of sculpture.

Let me explain further on how I felt straight after that encounter. The moment I saw the photo, I was so taken by it, as if it were a void vacuum. The boys looked so fragile and downcast. The picture was not taken long after the end of the war. Shadows of unrest and depravity were hanging over them. I could imagine these boys growing up only to be swallowed into another war (the Second World War), surviving or dying, or wretchedly amputated, ending their lives in obscurity. What could have happened to them? They would have grown into the generation who had to break their bones confronting a changing Germany. I was so deluged with obsessing imaginations and associations that I could not tear my eyes off their images.

It is not my intention to keep going with such a host of unforgettable feelings at that moment of grave encounter; because at exactly the same moment I began to question about Time. Probably what first comes to most of us in regards to time is the element of sequence. Sequence is acoustic with our life in reality: the sound of a clock ticking, every second, every minute, every hour, and the endless procession of another moment. None can be emancipated from the absolute power of that particular aspect of time, for time is the god behind all the aging, decaying, and perishing. Apart from its sequential nature, time makes all kinds of human affairs proceed and unfold. If a person answers to the question on why the Roman Empire fell, ‘because it got old’, then he is an idiot. In order to look for the reason for the decline of the Roman Empire, and for many of other historical, societal incidents, we always look for elements of time that are not sequential. We take liberties to ignore the boring sequential order and edit time and its collaborators according to our primary agenda, such as recollecting, analyzing, contemplating, or even criticizing, but always in liaison with our present.



[kl.k.7d. 24. 10. 1920, Berlin] plaster, terra-cotta, 65x55x150cm each -33pcs, 1995


Can it be said then that time, is riddled with marks of holes and punctures – made from the time of the present? Yes, indeed. When the occasion arises, we build up the conduit which connects our present to the past, and observe the ‘present’ of the past. If necessary, we even move around the conduit to a different ‘past’ time, editing time. And that is exactly what I did upon looking at the photo of the little German boys. I tore open a window for time in shuttered silence. Through the window, I saw the boys on the photo as they were in their own present. They are in 1920, a bunch of 7-year-old boys sitting in front of the camera oblivious to their destiny. Then my window turns towards the time during the First World War. Most of the boys on the photo do not even know what war is, but their parents and families are heavily affected by the domestic social unrest and anxieties and the news on the war – Germany is defeated. From there I reached out to the boys’ future, which previously had been a translucent time, or the past, in the normal sequence of time, but became alive as the boys grew and moved on, and my window followed their ‘present’. The boys and their friends become soldiers, prisoners, holocaust victims, and officers at the Wolf’s Lair at another war and experience devastating bombing and adversity…and so on. The window I slit into time and the past, made me see every present of the past of the boys. I hauled out an edited procession of the past and brought it out to my present.






The work, ‘kl.k.7d.24.10.1920, Berlin’ is the present form of mass in which I preserved time that is lived and forgotten. The work is not only the figuration of the little boys but the present of the past seen through the window at the end of the conduit that I have made. More room for unspoken virtualities is caught and a wider net, the edge of which is rather obtuse, is spread – the past is wrapped with the present.




“I made each of them in order and addressed a relative identity to every sculpture. Thus the sculptures exist in the world of reality just like we do.” - Lee, Yong Deok