Gaze

Il Ho Lee 1990

Korean Art Museum Association
Seoul, South Korea

Thinking about woman’s womb in the sleepless night. There is an old man who doesn’t have the power to go back where he was from, but, like a salmon, he tries to climb the mountain of thoughts looking for the origin of the time.

Details

Title: Gaze
Creator: Lee, Il Ho
Creator Lifespan: 1947
Creator Nationality: Korean
Creator Birth Place: Boryeong, Korea
Date Created: 1990
Physical Dimensions: w3800 x h6800 x d2100 cm
Type: Sculpture
Medium: Bronze
Critic's Note: Female body and its creation of Lee Il Ho's symbolism This article was extremely confusing.. I think you may need to look at this one and try to make sense of it and then have me look at it. The statements don’t really make their points clear. Lee Il Ho's recent sculptures begin with structural shapes that are intended to be symbolic situational works with organic living forms. The female body is a basic form but has diverse structural elements dominating the form. On the other hand, obsessively intuitive forms are created to depict more novelty. Traditionally, the human body has been a motif for a long time in sculpture. In this aspect, Lee Il Ho's sculptures seem not that different from other sculptures that use the human body as motif. However, he came to this motif not in the same context that most traditional human body artwork has. For instance, traditional work pursues structural beauty and spatial balance of the human body but, Lee Il Ho’s work approaches surreal ideas symbolized from his subconscious world. Looking at this point, we could say his work explores a unique position in sculpture. While it is hard to see the surrealism in not only his sculptures, but also in his paintings; recently, even the way that he depicts the surreal world of senses is very unique. Therefore, the free structural interpretation and deformation of his human body artwork must be understood with automatism, which is the basic methodology in surrealism. Such automatism was derived from the human body motif with refraction. Then, as organic creations develop the living factors seem naturally more mysterious and feel more expansive in the space with infinite freedom. Maybe his sculptures and basic grammars are innate here. Moreover, it is noticeable that most of the human bodies in his sculptures are female and focus strongly on the mother's womb and eroticism. It is, in fact, the female body that has always been understood as the mother's womb or a symbol of love. However, his work reveals the symbolic system more situational. In other words, some essential elements of women are dissolved in the mother's womb and love, but they are materialized as the human body. In this case, the mother's womb or love themes are not simply assumed themes but presented before us as an existing presence. Therefore, one can observe which situation provokes emotions in the viewer from his human body sculptures. However, his unique sculptures are not simply art in a visual field, but he awakens his artwork through the use of touch. His infinite space is open with the logic of creation that is born with the touch of hand. His paranoiac thinking will grow ripe in the space.
Artist's Education: Hongik University, Seoul, Korea. M.F.A., Sculpture.

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