The art of seeing

DOUBLE UP

Lee Bul

Korean artist Lee Bul continues to ride on the coattails of her hugely successful three-floor show at London's Hayward Gallery last summer. At Art Basel in Hong Kong, she will bring her stunning zeppelin to Encounters and will show Perdu from her recent Untitled series in the Kabinett section through Lehmann Maupin. Her retrofuturistic imagery is rooted in biology, but she collages materials such as human hair with acrylic shards, crystals and dried flowers to broaden these concepts beyond the individual body. The resulting forms reveal the intrinsic tension that exists within fragmentation, and within utopian idealism and the reality of its resulting ruin. The unfinished state she alludes to in these pieces is a reference to the persistent human drive to find a sense of "completeness". Both series are united in their exploration of structural systems, from the individual body to larger architectural frameworks, which have become a hallmark of her oeuvre. (March 29–31)