Best in show

“Suspended from on high and adorned with lots of shiny sequins and beads, this work has cosmic connotations and looks something like a glittery satellite. On the other hand, it could also be an island adrift… a beguiling place that is, perhaps, more beautiful than functional.

That idea of an attractive superficiality hiding a fundamental flaw or problem is typical of Lee Bul’s work.

I think that comes from growing up in South Korea in the years when a military dictatorship gave way to turbo-charged capitalism. That must have been something like living in the old Soviet Union and having people suddenly say to you: ‘Sorry, we got it all wrong. It was a pleasure experimenting with you but now we’re moving to another plan entirely.’

Lee Bul’s life has been pushed and pulled between different ideas of how the world should work. No wonder her work often features startling opposites.

For example, an earlier piece – Majestic Splendor – was a sequin-covered fish that, after a few days, began to decay and fill the gallery with an awful stench. Initially, the viewer is attracted to it because, like all creatures, you tend to be drawn to the light… but then you find out something’s really rotten.

She must have seen a kindred spirit in Bruno Taut, a somewhat idealistic German architect, urban planner and utopian visionary who had a keen interest in glass and mirrors.

One of his proposed constructions was a giant glass cathedral but, alas, he didn’t actually build that much. There was, however, a lot of writing and theorising.

He was expelled by the Nazis so the time wasn’t right for any of his ideas to come to fruition. There were so many castles in the air and that’s what this work is about.
Here we have a giant representation of Lee Bul’s intellectual interests but there’s the blingy thing going on, too.

After Bruno Taut (Devotion to Drift) is a new commission through Art Fund International that we are showing for the first time before it reverts to the collection of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Meanwhile, Tate recently commissioned a remake of an earlier work, a monster costume that Lee Bul used to wear back home in the 1980s for a performance about being both beautiful and ugly at the same time. It is those opposites that make her such an important artist.”

The Lee Bul exhibition runs until 9 November

Jonathan Watkins is the director of the Ikon gallery in Birmingham