“我想我不應該對藝術抱有過高的期待。藝術就像水面上的蒸汽，在陽光裡變成彩虹，消散在風中，穿過地鐵隧道，在站臺上候車的人們中間稍事停留，在人們手握茶杯的指縫間閃爍，繼而消失無影蹤。然而即便如此，我也無法放棄藝術。作為一個在清晨的操場中央彎腰畫下一個圓圈，或是用溼抹布擦拭一面落滿灰塵的鏡子的人，我望著藝術，看著它退卻至房間的天花板上，在這個房間裡，地板正在開裂，所有傢俱都在下沉。”
——李健鏞，《藝術家的筆記》，1995年
“I believe that I should not expect much from art. Art rises as steam on the surface of water, makes a rainbow in the sun, disappears into the wind, and passes through the subway tunnel to stay amidst people waiting in the platform and sparkle in between their fingers holding a tea cup to disappear. However, I cannot give up art either. As the person who stands in the middle of a big playground and bends over early in the morning to draw a circle or who wipes a dusted mirror with a wet rag, I look at the art that has evacuated to the ceiling in the room where the floor is cracking up and all furnishings are sinking.”
——Lee Kun-Yong，Artist’s Note，1995
李健鏞
佩斯北京
2018年7月15日至9月01日
佩斯畫廊北京空間將為韓國藝術家李健鏞舉辦他在中國的首次個展。李健鏞是韓國前衛藝術團體“空間與時間”（ST）的創始人、“韓國前衛藝術協會”（AG）的領軍人物，他在上世紀六七十年代以簡潔而發人深省的行為表演作品為彼時在觀念與政策上腹背受困的韓國前衛藝術運動注入精神力量，被譽為“韓國行為藝術之父”。此次展覽將以超過40件作品回顧這位觀念藝術先鋒近50年的創作實踐，作品涵蓋繪畫、雕塑、影像及特定場域裝置等。展覽將於7月14日下午3點舉辦開幕預覽及藝術家特邀對談，並於4點向公眾開幕。
以阿倫·卡普羅1958年極富遠見的文章《傑克遜·波洛克的遺產》為起點，日常生活已毫無保留地向新一代藝術家敞開了自己。而李健鏞無疑也是這份珍貴遺產的繼承者之一。他曾於1975年後的五年間連續創作了約五十個行為事件性作品。這些作品均由日常生活的基本元素構成，並通過在不同場合中重複進行表演，令事件的核心得以從中顯現。在李健鏞的早期代表作《吃餅乾》中，藝術家端坐於桌前，將桌面上的餅乾放入口中，但他每吃下一塊，都會在手臂上捆綁一節夾板。隨著手腕、手肘乃至肩膀等關節部位依次被夾板固定而無法彎曲，藝術家將餅乾放入口中的企圖將越來越難以實現。以貝克特式的簡練，李健鏞的作品直觀地向公眾展示了受到限制的日常生活將可能陷入何種困境。在彼時韓國飽受爭議的政治背景下，這一系列行為毫不意外地引發了共鳴，並很快借助影像被傳播甚至模仿。而李的可貴之處在於，他從未強化過這一可能為他帶來更多聲望的“社會活動家”的角色，甚至反對做過於政治化的解讀，以保護作品的開放性。對他而言，事件僅體現為事件本身，而事件的意義則動態地顯現於“我”與“他人”體驗的相互作用之中——他甚至曾在表演結束後將作品的“步驟圖示”發放給現場的觀眾，鼓勵他們以自己的方式在家復現，從而將作品的主權徹底開放為公有。
《吃餅乾》於1975年10月在韓國國立現代美術館首次實施，與它同場表演的作品《數歲》則展現出理解李健鏞創作的另一條線索：藝術家從“1”開始，與音箱中播放的報數聲同步地順序報出數字，並在報到自己的歲數時停止，而音箱中事先錄製的報數聲則繼續播放下去。如果說前者以自身為絕對尺度，關照個體生命的自由與限制，後者則將生命投入到世界的召喚之中，並通過以個體的標尺與世界的刻度相併置，去完成彼此的相互印證。兩個月後，李健鏞創作出了代表作《地點的邏輯》，將《數歲》中初現端倪的世界觀更為精確地表現出來：他在地上畫下一個圓，用手指向它並大聲喊出“那裡！”隨後走入圓心，指向腳下喊出“這裡！”繼而一步跨出，指向落在身後的圓再喊：“那裡！”最後沿圓周線走上一圈，持續念出：“哪裡，哪裡，哪裡。”並慢慢走出觀眾的視線。在這段“禪機”般簡潔而生動的行為表演中，藝術家口中的指示代詞既回應了西方的哲學沉思（梅洛-龐蒂：“一定要有‘這裡’，那裡才會有‘那裡’。”）；也應和了東方的辯證思考（莊子：“彼出於是，是亦因彼。”）。與此同時，伴隨著藝術家咄咄逼人的手勢與喊聲，觀眾也被強行卷入這場行為表演之中，原本置身事外的單純觀看行為被“同時在場”這一無可爭辯的事實所破壞，最終，在表演者與觀眾各自的時空及經驗維度中，世界與身體的關係將重新得到感知與確認。
李健鏞的日常行為表演在第二年引入了繪畫——或者更確切地說，他將“繪畫”這一動作放入了一系列的身體動作之中。以他標誌性的作品《身體描繪76-1》為例，藝術家選取一塊等身長的木板，並從木板背後伸出手臂，艱難地將畫筆劃到木板的正面，並在憑感覺劃滿手能觸及的區域後，將塗滿的部分鋸掉，然後重複前述步驟。隨著木板被不斷地被鋸短，手臂能觸及到的區域越來越大，塗畫的行為也越來越自如，在整個木板均被塗滿後，藝術家按倒序將所有部分重新摞起，復原出與自己等高的“畫作”。這一系列作品在最初曾被命名為“身體的畫像”，藉助顏料在木板表面留下的痕跡，李健鏞以自己的方式創作“具象”行動繪畫。在後續作品中，藝術家背靠在畫布上，儘可能地深展手臂，沿自身輪廓在身後的畫布上塗滿射線狀的線條；或是以肩膀為軸心，記錄下雙臂自然擺動的軌跡。在某種意義上，當李健鏞選取身體進行創作時，身體就成為了解開一切謎題的鑰匙。正如他此前所言，正是以身體為中介，生命內部的體驗得以與外部世界相連通。在他有意設置的種種條件或限制下，身體通過最基本的行為動作探索自身的尺度，並在行動中繪下身體的“自畫像”。
“我想我不應該對藝術抱有過高的期待。藝術就像水面上的蒸汽，在陽光裡變成彩虹，消散在風中，穿過地鐵隧道，在站臺上候車的人們中間稍事停留，在人們手握茶杯的指縫間閃爍，繼而消失無影蹤。”李健鏞曾在《藝術家的筆記》一文中如是說，並以他的整個藝術生涯回應了卡普羅在《傑克遜·波洛克的遺產》中所做的預言。正如卡普羅所期待的，新一代的藝術家將成為時代的鍊金術士，為我們從平凡事物中召喚平凡自身的意義。在文章發表的整整六十年後，通過一位來自鄰國的謙遜的實踐者，我們將有機會重新確認這一預言的價值所在。
關於藝術家
李健鏞1942年出生於朝鮮黃海道，在朝鮮戰爭期間隨家人來到韓國，並於1963年進入韓國最負盛名的藝術學院首爾弘益大學美術系學習西方繪畫。在藝術及社會思潮不斷湧現的六十年代，李健鏞積極參與到韓國前衛藝術的萌芽生態之中，對學院式的官方主流畫派進行反思與顛覆。1969年，他與朋友創辦了藝術團體“空間與時間”（ST），並同時成為“韓國前衛藝術協會”（AG）的領軍藝術家之一。在創作了一系列事件性的特定場域裝置後，李健鏞以巴黎雙年展為契機，開始構思以自己的身體創作藝術作品，並於1979年聖保羅雙年展上贏得國際聲譽。他以一系列簡潔而引人深思的行為表演作品為韓國前衛藝術運動帶來了革新性的力量，奠定了他在韓國前衛藝術中的關鍵地位。李健鏞現生活並工作於韓國群山市，任國立群山大學榮譽教授。
作品信息 Work Captions
中文 ⓒ Lee Kun-Yong, 佩斯北京供圖
英文 ⓒ Lee Kun-Yong, courtest of Pace Gallery
1
李健鏞
地點的邏輯
1975
照片
51.3 x 61 cm（單張）
Lee Kun-Yong
Logic of Place
1975
C-print
51.3 x 61 cm(each)
2
李健鏞
身體描繪 76-1
1976
照片
20.4 x 30.3 cm (單張)
Lee Kun-Yong
The Method of Drawing 76-1
1976
C-print
20.4 x 30.3 cm (each)
3
李健鏞
身體描繪 76-3-2016
2016
照片，布面丙烯
130.3 x 162.2 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
The Method of Drawing 76-3-2016
2016
Photo, Acrylic on canvas
130.3 x 162.2 cm
4
李健鏞
身體描繪 76-1-2017
2017
布面鉛筆，丙烯
171 x 151 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
Bodyscape 76-1-2017
2017
Pencil, Acrylic on canvas
171 x 151 cm
5
李健鏞
瀑布－地點的邏輯
1995-97
照片，布面丙烯
130.5 x 81 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
Waterfall-Logic of Place
1995-97
Photo, Acrylic on canvas
130.5 x 81 cm
6
李健鏞
身體描繪 76-4
2017
布面鉛筆，丙烯
91 x 116.7 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
The Method of Drawing 76-4
2017
Pencil, Acrylic on canvas
91 x 116.7 cm
7
李健鏞
身體描繪 76-2-2011
2011~2014
照片，布面丙烯
260 x 194 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
The Method of Drawing 76-2-2011
2011~2014
Photo, Acrylic on canvas
260 x 194 cm
8
李健鏞
李健鏞與約瑟夫博伊斯，身體項（男）與阿拉伯女人
1988
紙上粉筆，丙烯
78.5 x 108 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
Lee Kun-Yong & Joseph Beuys, Corporal term (Man) and Arabia Woman
1988
Conte, Acrylic on paper
78.5 x 108 cm
Lee Kun-Yong
Pace Beijing
Jul 15, 2018- Sep 01, 2018
Pace Beijing will hold Korean artist Lee Kun-Yong's first solo exhibition in China. Lee Kun-Yong is a founder of the Korean avant-garde art group Space and Time (ST), and a leading figure of the group Avant-Garde Association (AG). In the 1960s and 70s, his simple, thought-provoking performance art pieces infused new spiritual energy into a Korean avant-garde art movement then beleaguered on both conceptual and political fronts, and he is called the “father of Korean performance art.” This exhibition will look back on nearly fifty years of the artist’s creative practice through more than forty artworks in the mediums of painting, sculpture, video, and site- specific installation. The exhibition will begin with a preview and artist discussion at 3pm on July 14, and open to the public at 4pm.
Beginning with Allan Kaprow's prophetic 1958 essay The Legacy of Jackson Pollock, everyday life has laid itself bare for artists. Lee Kun-Yong is doubtless one of the inheritors of this precious legacy. Over a period of five years beginning in 1975, he created roughly fifty performance actions. These works are composed from the basic elements of everyday life, and through repeated performances in various occasion, break the symptomatic “camouflage” of single performance and allow the core of the happening to emerge. In an early representative work, Eating Biscuits, Lee Kun-Yong sat upright in front of a table laid with biscuits, each time he ate a biscuit, he would attach a splint to his arm. As the various joints in his arm were fixed in place and prevented from bending, the artist had increasing difficulty successfully eating each biscuit. With a simplicity reminiscent of Samuel Beckett, Lee Kun-Yong's artwork directly demonstrated to the audience the kind of predicament to which a limited everyday life can lead. In the repressive political atmosphere of Korea at the time, this series of performances unsurprisingly struck a deep chord, and was quickly disseminated through photography, and even imitated. What’s invaluable of Lee is that he has never emphasized his role as “social activist,” even though it perhaps would have heightened his fame. He has even opposed overly political interpretations of his artworks in order to preserve their openness. For him, the event only manifests as the event itself, while the meaning of the event emerges within the dynamic interplay of the experiences of “I” and “others.” He even once handed out a step-by-step manual to the audiences after a performance and encouraged them to reproduce the performance at home in their own way, thus making the artwork’s authorship open to the public thoroughly.
Eating Biscuits was first performed at the MMCA Seoul in October 1975. Age Counting, shown at the same exhibition, provides another thread for understanding Lee Kun-Yong's creations: beginning with one, the artist counted along to the numbers coming from a speaker, stopping when it reached his age, while the speaker itself kept counting. If the former artwork treated the artist’s own life as an absolute measure of freedom and limitation in individual life, the latter expanded to the external world, by way of juxtaposing individual gradations and the gauge of the world to project the physical world into a call out into the world and mutual affirmation. Two months later, Lee Kun-Yong created the representative work Logic of Place, which conveyed the worldview glimpsed in Age Counting in a more precise manner: he drew a circle on the ground, then pointed at it, shouting, “there!” He then stepped inside the circle, pointed at his feet, and shouted, “here!” He then stepped out again, pointed back at the circle, and shouted, “there!” Finally, he walked along the circumference of the circle while shouting, “where, where, where” as he gradually disappeared from the audience's view. In this Zen-like simple and vivid performance action, the artist's words echo Western philosophical meditations (Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “There has to be ‘here,’ so there can be ‘there’”) as well as Eastern dialectics (Chuang-tzu: “Other comes out from It, It too adapts to Other”). Meanwhile, the artist’s aggressive gestures and shouts forcibly drew the audience into the performance, the once innocent, removed act of viewing destroyed by the incontrovertible fact of the simultaneous presence. In the end, in the dimensions of the experience of time and space in the performer and each audience member, the relationship between the world and the body is perceived and reaffirmed.
A year later, Lee Kun-Yong's everyday performances began to incorporate painting, or, to be more precise, he inserted the act of painting into a series of body motions. In the landmark work Body Drawing 76-01, the artist selected a wood board the same height as himself, and extended his arm around from behind to draw on the front of the board with great difficulty. Once he felt he had drawn on all the surfaces he could physically reach, he sawed off those sections and repeated his initial steps. As the board was continually cut short, the area his hand was able to reach grew larger, and the act of drawing grew increasingly natural. Once the entire board was evenly filled, the artist reattached the pieces in order, restoring this life-sized “painting.” This series of works was originally titled “body representation.” Using the traces left on the board, Lee Kun-Yong created “figurative” action paintings in his own way. In the works that followed, the artist would lean back against a canvas, and attempt to stretch his arms behind him and fill in an outline around his body, or use his shoulders as an axis to record the traces of his arms’ rotation. In a sense, when Lee Kun-Yong chooses to use his body for creation, the body becomes the key to unlocking every secret. As he has stated before, when the body serves as medium, the inner experience of life becomes connected to the external world. Under the various conditions and limits the artist has set, the body explores its own dimensions through the most basic actions and behaviors, painting a “self-portrait” in the process.
In the essay Artist’s Note, Lee Kun-Yong wrote, “I believe that I should not expect much from art. Art rises as steam on the surface of water, makes a rainbow in the sun, disappears into the wind, and passes through the subway tunnel to stay amidst people waiting in the platform and sparkle in between their fingers holding a tea cup to disappear.” With his entire artistic career, he has responded to the prophecy Kaprow laid out in The Legacy of Jackson Pollock. Just as Kaprow had hoped, a new generation of artists are becoming the alchemists of their eras, summoning the significance of the ordinary within ordinary things. Sixty years after that essay's release, we find, in the person of a humble practitioner from a neighboring country, a new opportunity to affirm the value of that prophecy.
About the artist
Lee Kun-Yong was born in 1942 in Hwanghai-do. During the Korean War, he came to Korea with his family. He studied Western painting at the Department of Fine Arts of Seoul Hongik University, the most prestigious art school in Korea. In the 1960s, when art and social thoughts continued to emerge, Lee Kun-Yong actively participated in criticizing toward the tendency of the art world at the time, the emergence of new Western art forms and paradigms. In 1969, he founded the art group Space and Time (ST) with his friends and became one of the leading artists of a Korean art association, Avant-garde (AG). After creating a series of event-specific installation, Lee Kun-Yong took the Paris Biennale as an opportunity to start conceiving art with his own body. A series of concise and provoking performances brought innovation to the Korean avant-garde art movement. The 1979 Sao Paulo Biennale had gained him an acknowledgment as one of the critical figures of 1970’s Korean art. Lee Kun-Yong currently lives and works in Kunsan, South Korea, and is an honorary professor at the National Kunsan University.
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