In “Things Unstable,” Seung-taek Lee’s aptly titled exhibition here, everyday objects and materials don’t behave as they should. In one work, the stones seem weightless, suspended by a network of ropes (Untitled1982-2022), or even plush and pillow-like when tightly “bound” by lengths of yarn (attached stone, 1969). The paper, however, feels extremely waterproof in the room Untitled, 1983: Several sheets are crumpled to contrast with the smooth wooden beams on which they rest. The Korean artist has worked to break down entrenched notions of the medium since the 1950s, employing the term “non-sculpture” for his irreverent, sometimes humorous way of undermining the properties of an element in a work given via performative gestures, such as binding and crushing.
An early proponent of eco-art in the 1970s, Lee began doing outdoor performances with air and fire. A video of Wind Folk Fun, 1971 – recently reconstructed along the Hudson River for this exhibition – depicts huge lengths of red fabric mutating into different shapes due to powerful gales on Nanji Island in Seoul, where the artwork was executed at the ‘origin. And in The performance art of burning, 1989, flames create a group of ephemeral sculptures from older works that Lee doused in gasoline. These spectacular events contrast with the “non-sculptures” exhibited, mostly on a small scale, which only evoke the countless researches of the artist over the past seventy years.
Lee contributes, but does not necessarily fit neatly into the lineage of post-minimalism, mono-ha and land art. Here is an artist who developed his practice on the fringes of the post-war Korean avant-garde, resisting any form of classification as a means of preserving nature’s diminishing arrangement in the wake of Korea’s industrialization from South. Among Lee’s most direct works is “The Earth Performance” series, 1989-1996, in which he transports giant PVC balloons painted to resemble our planet to sites around the world, inviting passers-by to touch, push or take care of the globes. One of these Earths is in a corner of the gallery: it is both object and performance – bruised, scratched and, again, not behaving as it should.
