SUNJUNG KIM, Curator Sunjung Kim Is a Curator and Currently the President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation

Willing To Be Vulnerable, 2015–2016/2020. Installation view of the 20th Biennale of Sydney, 2016. Photo: Algirdas Bakas. Photo courtesy: the artist

UTOPIA SAVED SOLO EXHIBITION FEATURING LEGENDARY SOUTH KOREAN ARTIST LEE BUL THE MANEGE CENTRAL EXHIBITION HALL, ST PETERSBURG DATES: 13 NOVEMBER 2020 – 31 JANUARY 2021

Curator – Sunjung Kim Co-Curator – SooJin Lee

Press Images Untitled (“Buried memory tableau”), 2008. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol. Untitled paper #4, 2009. Photo courtesy: the artist Photo courtesy: the artist

ORGANIZED BY the Manege Central Exhibition Hall in cooperation with Studio Lee Bul and the Gwangju Biennale Foundation.

PARTNERS:

ST PETERSBURG COMMITTEE FOR CULTURE

Manege is proud to announce the forthcoming exhibition Utopia Saved – the first ever major solo exhibition featuring legendary Korean artist Lee Bul to take place in Russia. Lee Bul’s work provides a true insight into contemporary art in South Korea and Asia as a whole. Her work has received widespread acclaim around the world, with solo exhibitions taking place at leading museums and contemporary art centres in New York, Philadelphia, Sidney, Toronto, Marseille, Bern, Tokyo, Seoul, London and Berlin. She has also twice taken part in the Venice Biennale, in 1999 and 2019.

Lee Bul’s longstanding fascination with utopia entered a new phase in the first decade of the 21st century, « when she started creating architectural sculptures and drawings inspired by Constructivism and Russian avant-garde art and architecture. The artist uses icons and tropes from utopian modernism, transforming, allegorising, and juxtaposing them in her own creative works. She engages with utopian modernism with empathy and originality, with critique and imagination. Utopia Saved is Lee Bul’s first solo exhibition to be held in Russia, and for the first time presents her post-2005 works alongside the Russian art that inspired them.

The exhibition focuses on the artist’s environmental installations, architectural sculptures, and drawings produced since 2005, from a maquette for Mon grand récit to the Civitas Solis and the Willing To Be Vulnerable series, among others, in addition to preparatory studies that reveal the complexity of her creative process. Some of the drawings and maquettes included in this exhibition have never been shown before. These will for the first time be exhibited together with works by Russian avant-garde artists that have intrigued her imagination for years.» Sunjung Kim and SooJin Lee, exhibition curators

For all press-related questions, Aleksandra Kovaleva Juhwa moon The Manege Central Exhibition Hall Gwangju Biennale Foundation please contact Manege and Gwangju +7 921 7727510 +82 10 9166 3960 Biennale Foundation press teams: [email protected] [email protected] Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable – Velvet #9 JTVP 3582/23 CE), 2019. The Rachel and Study for Aubade III, 2014. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol. Photo courtesy: the artist Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol. Photo courtesy: the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul, and London

The multifaceted work of Lee Bul has in many respects coming up with architectural solutions for the exhibition. defined the development trajectory of contemporary Lee made a model of Manege’s space by hand at a scale of Asian Art and has also had a significant influence on the 1:50, which allowed her to meticulously plan the positioning contemporary artistic process all around the world. of the exhibits and organise the exhibition like a journey through a site-specific landscape, opening up unexpected The Utopia Saved exhibition will be one of Lee Bul’s most conceptual and visual parallels. personal artistic expressions. It is the first time that the artist will so fully explain to the public the sources of the The exhibition in St Petersburg will focus on the architectural current phase of development of her artistic path and the sculptures, environmental installations, and drawings that influence that the Russian avant-garde has had onher Lee Bul has produced since 2005, including some drawings work. and maquettes that have never before been shown. The exhibition includes one of her most recent pieces – Untitled Preparations for the exhibition in Manege have been (Willing To Be Vulnerable Velvet#9 JTVP3582/23 CE), a collage underway for about two years. Lee Bul has been quite active on velvet. Other large-scale installations from the Willing To in all aspects of the project, from developing the initial idea Be Vulnerable series will be reassembled especially for the and selecting the works to preparing the catalogue and Manege exhibitions.

The project will also focus on the creative visual dialogue Armed Forces, the Iakov Chernikhov International Charitable between Lee Bul and the Russian avant-garde. Included in Architectural Foundation, the Vologda Regional Picture the latter are works by artists Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Gallery, the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, the Perm Rodchenko, Aleksandra Ekster, architects Ivan Leonidov State Art Gallery, the Pskov-Izborsk Integrated Museum and and Iakov Chernikhov, scientist and thinker Konstantin Reserve, and the Imperial Porcelain Factory. Tsiolkovsky, and others. Utopia Saved opens up a new facet of contemporary art, in Various Russian museums and artistic institutions have also continuation of the centuries-old dialogue between the made a significant contribution to the exhibition. Among the cultures of Russia, Europe, and Asia. participating institutions are the Russian Academy of Arts Academic Research Museum, the Tsiolkovsky State Museum Manege will present a rich programme of events to run of the History of Cosmonautics, the Shchusev State Museum alongside the exhibition. This will aim to draw additional of Architecture, the Bakhrushin State Theatre Museum, interest from visitors, and to cast more light on contemporary the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, the RF Ministry art and culture in South Korea, as well as on their ties with of Defence’s Central Museum of the Russian Federation Russian culture and the avant-garde.

Utopia Saved Exhibition’s catalogue

A dual-language catalogue has been prepared. It includes to Cultural Forum Public Flow participants from November articles by Russian and foreign experts written especially for 11-14. Register on the forum’s official website to download the publication that explore various aspects of Lee Bul’s art. free e-tickets for the exhibition. The exhibition will open to Manege’s publication programme partner is Free Artists – an the general public on November 17. Autonomous non profit organisation for the development of art and culture. On 11 November a symposium will take place as part of the cultural forum. This will examine the work of Lee Bul, The exhibition and accompanying event programme aim to as well as the influence that the Russian avant-garde has give a voice to one of the most important artists of our time had on art in East Asia. There will also be a presentation and to immerse visitors into an absorbing research study of the exhibition catalogue and a press preview. Russian into new cultural codes and ways of thinking visually. In and foreign experts have been invited to participate in addition, their mission is to demonstrate the importance of the symposium, including Mami Kataoka, director of the the way modern culture is perceived from the viewpoint of Mori Art Museum (Tokyo); Stephanie Rosenthal, director being involved in global artistic and sociocultural processes. of the Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition centre (Berlin); and of course Lee Bul herself and project curators Sunjung The exhibition forms a key part of the Year of Cultural Kim and SooJin Lee. Exchange between Russia and South Korea (2020), which is taking place to mark the 30-year anniversary of the The symposium will be moderated by curator Sunjung Kim establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries. and Semyon Mikhailovsky, rector of the St Petersburg Repin The exhibition will hold its opening at the 9th Saint Academy of Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, and head of the Petersburg International Cultural Forum, and will be open Fine Arts section at the Cultural Forum.

LEE BUL

Lee Bul (b. 1964) is an artist based in Seoul, South Korea. In more recent projects and exhibitions, Lee Bul has Trained as a sculptor during the period of social and political produced stunning, immersive installations, such as Civitas upheavals of the 1980s, she started off her artistic career with Solis II and Aubade III for South Korea’s National Museum performative pieces that incorporated wearable soft sculptures. of Contemporary Art in 2014 and Palais de Tokyo in 2015, In the 1990s she gained international recognition with a series and Willing To Be Vulnerable for the 20th Biennale of Sydney of provocative works, including her scandalous installation in 2016. Her most recent survey show encompassed the of fresh fish left to decay and her Cyborg sculptures, hybrids entire 30 years of her career; Lee Bul: Crashing, curated by of machine and organic forms. In the 2000s she became Stephanie Rosenthal, was held at London’s Hayward Gallery interested in using her art to explore the history of modernity. and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin from May 2018 through Lee began creating large-scale installations and architectural January 2019. sculptures - imaginative inquiries into history fused with her personal memory and experience.

For all press-related questions, Aleksandra Kovaleva Juhwa moon The Manege Central Exhibition Hall Gwangju Biennale Foundation please contact Manege and Gwangju +7 921 7727510 +82 10 9166 3960 Biennale Foundation press teams: [email protected] [email protected] SUNJUNG KIM, curator Sunjung Kim is a curator and currently the president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Throughout her career, Kim has made an enormous contribution to the development of contemporary art in South Korea.

She has also done a great deal to establish enduring ties between cultural figures in South Korea and the global art scene. In addition to her role as curator, Sunjung Kim is artistic director of the Real DMZ Project, a contemporary art project based on research conducted on the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in South Korea and its border area, which she founded in 2011.

Previously, she was chief curator and deputy director (1993- 2004) and the director (2016-2017) of the Art Sonje Center © Photo by Jung My in Seoul, where she curated numerous exhibitions, including solo exhibitions of Martin Creed (2009), Haegue Yang (2010), Abraham Cruzvillegas (2015), and Francis Alÿs (2018). She was also the commissioner of the Korean Pavilion for the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), the artistic director of Platform Seoul (2006-2010), a professor at the Korea National University of Arts (2006-2012), the artistic director of Media City Seoul (2010), a co-artistic director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), the artistic director of the ACC Archive & Research at Asia Culture Center (2014-2015), and the chief curator of the 12th Gwangju Biennale Imagined Borders (2018).

SOOJIN LEE, co-curator

SooJin Lee is an art historian and writer, teaching as an Assistant Professor at Hongik University in South Korea. Previously, she taught and worked at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Art Sonje Center.

Her recent articles include “(Un)see and Be (Un)seen: Yoko Ono Between Avant-Garde and Mass Culture” (2018), “Emoji at MoMA: Considering the ‘Original Emoji’ as Art” (2018), “Archives as Method: When the Artist Becomes the Art” (2019), and “Yours: Performing (in) Nikki S. Lee’s ‘Fan Club’ with Nikki S. Lee” (2019). Her curatorial research contributions include the 2018 Gwangju Biennale’s archive exhibition and the 2019 DMZ exhibition in Seoul.

For all press-related questions, Aleksandra Kovaleva Juhwa moon The Manege Central Exhibition Hall Gwangju Biennale Foundation please contact Manege and Gwangju +7 921 7727510 +82 10 9166 3960 Biennale Foundation press teams: [email protected] [email protected] Civitas Solis II, 2014. View of the exhibition, “MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2014: Lee Bul,” National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2014–2015. Commissioned by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. Sponsored by Hyundai Motor Company © Lee Bul. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol. Photo courtesy: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

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