Only the Young In-Gallery Performance: Lee Kun-Yong

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

October 13, 2023, 2–2:30 pm EDT

November 17 and 18, 2 pm: Sung Neung Kyung, Reading Newspapers (1976)

December 1 and 2, 2 pm: Kim Kulim, From Creation to Extinction (2015)

As part of Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, the Guggenheim Museum presents a public program series that focuses on the performance practice of three artists in the exhibition: Lee Kun-Yong (b. 1942), Kim Kulim (b. 1936) and Sung Neung Kyung (b. 1944). Presented over the course of three weekends, these performances by leading figures in the medium showcase either historic works that have been staged in various settings throughout each artist’s career or recent works that continue their philosophical inquiries from the 1960s and the 1970s. Each performance will take place within the exhibition galleries and is included with museum admission on its respective date.

In Snail’s Gallop (1979), Lee Kun-Yong traverses the floor of the gallery, squatting and marking the ground with continuous lines. The artist contrasts this mundane act with the incremental movement of his body, by which his two feet partially erase the drawn lines as he moves through space.

Free with museum admission, and first come, first served. No advance registration is required. To join, meet in the exhibition gallery on Tower Level 5 at 2 pm.

This program series was made possible with generous support from the Asian Art Circle at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Additional support has been provided by Korea Arts Management Service, which is an affiliation of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

About Lee Kun-Yong

Lee Kun-Yong (b. 1942, Sariwon, Hwanghae Province) has dedicated himself to creating Experimental drawings, installations, and events reflecting on the nature of the body. He first became fascinated with logic as a student at Pai Chai High School and was drawn especially to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s writings on phenomenology. He also became interested in Daoist philosophy. After graduating from Hongik University in 1967 with a degree in Western painting, he cofounded the ST Group with several of his peers and studied art theory and philosophy from the West and Japan, including the writings of Joseph Kosuth. Throughout the 1970s, Lee developed several performance-based works that used the body as a means of interacting with the world, presenting works in this vein at the fifth ST Exhibition, in 1976. He presented Corporal Term at the eighth Paris Biennial, in 1973, and also participated in each iteration of the Daegu Contemporary Art Festival between 1974 and 1979. In 1975, Lee embarked on his Event Logical series, which emphasized conceptually driven logical thinking over theatricality. Logic of Place was shown at the fourth AG Exhibition (1975) and Snail’s Gallop at the fifteenth São Paulo Biennial (1979). In 1982 Lee completed a graduate degree at Keimyung University and, as an honorary professor at Kunsan National University, dedicated himself to nurturing students. Currently, his interest in ecology and the climate crisis has led him to create a series of body drawings made on top of photographs related to these themes.

https://www.guggenheim.org/event/only-the-young-in-gallery-performance-lee-kun-yong