Lee Bul: Utopia Saved

The exhibition focuses on the architectural sculptures, environmental installations, and drawings that Lee Bul has produced since 2005, the year she began her journey of inquiry into the history of modernity. Her explorations have resulted in art that incorporates this history, in part through references to modernist architecture, utopian literature, and Constructivism.

The works on display will provide a comprehensive view of the artist’s journey, from her very first maquette for 'Mon grand récit' (2005) to her latest 'Willing To Be Vulnerable' series of immersive installations (2015–), in addition to preparatory studies for those monumental works that demonstrate the complexity of her creative process. Some of the drawings and maquettes are being shown to the public for the first time.

As Lee Bul’s first solo exhibition in Russia, 'Utopia Saved' was curated to present the artist’s works together with works by Russian avant-garde artists that have inspired them. Including Russian art in this exhibition was so important that the final selection of Lee Bul’s works was made after the selection of Russian works was finalised.

Based on its availability for loan, the selection for this Russian Angle section prioritised aesthetic and thematic relationships with Lee Bul’s works over general popularity. For example, this section includes Constructivist architect Ivan Leonidov’s paintings inspired by his reading of Tommaso Campanella’s utopian fiction 'Civitas Solis' (1602), the same book that sparked Lee Bul’s interest and prompted her to begin her 'Civitas Solis' series.

Having adopted mirrors as a medium to create illusions in her 'Infinity' series of the late 2000s, Lee Bul used fragmented mirrors extensively in her 'Civitas Solis' series (2013~), further complicating the relationship between her artwork, the viewer, and the exhibition space.

'Civitas Solis' is a series inspired by Italian theologian and philosopher Tommaso Campanella’s 1602 book of the same name, translated as 'The City of the Sun'. Considered an important early utopian fiction, Campanella’s book describes a transparent society in a city enclosed by seven circular walls. Ironically, for Lee Bul, Campanella’s utopia gave rise to the idea of a society under complete control — a reminder of the impossibility of utopia.

One of Lee Bul’s first architectural installations, 'Via Negativa II' (2014) is an enclosed, mirrored structure illuminated by rows of bulbs, which invites viewers into a maze-like space. Inside the structure, the mirrored walls create countless fictional paths and endless reflections of the viewers themselves, leading them to experience confusion and disorientation. However, it also challenges viewers and impels them to keep moving to find a way out of the deceiving images. 'Via Negativa II' offers different views of the self in and in relation to physical space.

The structure’s exterior is also entirely covered with mirrors, on which pages from psychologist Julian Jaynes’ book 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' (1976) are printed plainly, yet in reverse. The text is thus not meant to be perused or fully understood, but only remotely hints at the artist’s theme for this work. Lee Bul has referred to the “glass architecture” of Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut’s utopian visions as an inspiration, but her take on glass architecture is not transparent but ambiguous, not futuristic but introspective.

Lee Bul’s 2015 installation 'Aubade IV' continues a series inspired by the utopian tropes of the Russian avant-garde and the ideas of German architect Bruno Taut. In its fourth iteration, 'Aubade', which is a song of lovers parting at dawn, explores the theme of a fantasy collapsing. The structure – a cross between Tatlin’s tower, Taut’s 'Monument to the New Law', and the Tower of Babel – is upside down and appears to be taking a nose-dive, like a missile hurtling towards a target on the ground.

Like Taut’s monument, Tatlin’s iconic utopia – also a tribute to fundamental human thought – was never to take flesh. In fact, the pacifist sentiment that dominated art and conceptual thought after World War I was quickly replaced by other guiding principles. Lee Bul records this turnaround in her work, inspired as she is by utopian social ideas and by the hopes for a better world and a transformed humanity that were ushered in by revolutionary upheaval.

Thinking back on her childhood, Lee Bul recalls: “I was always dreaming about some ideal place. And it was always a kind of strange house in the mountains, a bunker concept, but which from the outside looks like just a rock, or a cave, and then inside there was my home, a shell, a space”. Many of Lee’s utopian images channel the theme of a secret place, hidden from the eyes of strangers, like one of the bunkers that were commonplace around the military settlement where Lee spent her childhood.

Lee Bul’s installation 'Bunker' combines the utopian theme of a secluded safe haven inside solid rock with the philosophy of Russian linguist and cultural historian Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin elaborated his concept of heteroglossia, or simultaneous use of different varieties of discourse, when he noted the presence of a multitude of different, sometimes conflicting, “languages” within a single language: the high and low styles, the vernacular and the literary norm. Bakhtin investigated the possibilities presented by the use of such forms of discourse together, explored the resulting tension that arises in the discursive field, and pondered a synthesis of various “languages”.

Lee Bul, in her take on this, brings together fragments of disparate materials to form a complete work of art. Lee’s childhood memories of military bunkers, fused with her obsession with the perfect refuge, have in the artist’s mind transformed into a reference to the paper architecture of the German visionary Bruno Taut, who in his drawings combined natural objects with man-made structures. Blending into Lee Bul’s narrative, it seems that Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas tie together parts of a complex picture.

The painting ‘Dirigible’ by Vasily Kuptsov showcases the diversity of the Soviet air fleet. In the centre is the dirigible, while airplanesfly in different directions, leaving tracks in the sky. A student of Pavel Filonov, Kuptsov attempted to include in his work both the method of the master of analytical art and Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism. The painting radiates romantic fascination with the achievements of Soviet aviation in the early 1930s. Before painting this picture, Kuptsov took nine airplane flights over Leningrad and Moscow, and once went up in an aerostat.A prime example of modernistic utopia, the painting connects with Lee Bul’s installation though a shared subject – humanity’s conquest of the aerial domain.

The objects and installations by Lee Bul contain echoes of utopian projects from the 1920s. The emerging new world called for both a new living environment and a new human.

In 'City of the Sun', Leonidov has designed majestic, almost unearthly structures, pagodas, tents, and arches, while a huge gold balloon filled with helium floats over the earth moving around freely, subject to the vagaries of the wind. The balloon was put up by city residents, a symbol of the oath they had taken to maintain and support peace.

In all his future projects for actual competitions, it was as if Leonidov was building yet another piece of this ideal world – the United Nations Building, a circus, a project for the World Expo in Moscow in 1967… This city was never intended to be finished by the architect himself. He invites us, his descendants, to join him in continuing the work and conveying the idea forward.

Polina Streltsova,
Researcher at the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, head of the Soviet Graphic Art Department.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky spent more than 40 years pondering the problems of air travel. Noting the significant drawbacks of aerostats with shells of rubberised fabric, in his works the scientist gives a scientific and technical basis for building a dirigible with a metallic shell.
The volume in this dirigible varies, which allows for maintaining a constant lift at various ambient air temperatures and flight altitudes. Varying the volume is possible using a special constriction system and corrugated sides. The gas that fills the airship can be heated by pushing exhaust gases from the motors through coils. Another feature is the thin metal shell. The shell should be corrugated to increase strength and stability, and here the ridges are perpendicular to the dirigible’s axis in order to maintain rigidity.

In attempting to prove the feasibility of his idea, Tsiolkovsky published his works on air travel one after another, built a number of dirigible models, and patented his invention in 9 countries.
One of these models can be seen at the exhibition. The model was built by Tsiolkovsky in 1912–1914 from tin, with dimensions of 213 × 55 × 16 cm.
This model is mentioned in the scientist’s work 'The First Model of a Purely Metallic Airship Made of Corrugated Iron', Kaluga, 1913
Transferred to the museum in 1936.

Lyudmila Kutuzova,
State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics, chief curator