PRESENTATION: Lee Bae-Syzyg
Lee Bae’s monochromatic practice is a formal and immersive journey into the abysses of blackness. Subtly blurring the lines between drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, he has developed his abstract aesthetics across categories to imbue the noncolor with tangible depth and intensity. Charcoal, obtained by burning wood and used to revive fire, offers a powerful metaphor for the cycle of life that has further inspired him to expand his exploration to include the fourth dimension of time.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Esther Schipperv Gallery Archive
In “Syzygy”, Lee Bae gathers together a constellation of works that speak not only of material and form, but of alignment, rhythm, and the unseen forces that bind opposites into harmony. The exhibition unfolds as a total environment—paintings, sculptures, and site-specific interventions woven into a space that itself becomes a field of contemplation. At the heart of Lee Bae’s practice is charcoal, a substance he has elevated from the residue of fire into a vessel of profound meaning. When he first arrived in France in the early 1990s, charcoal was simply an accessible material. Yet what began as necessity soon revealed itself as destiny. In Korean tradition, charcoal is more than matter; it is the keeper of fire’s energy, believed to purify, protect, and hold the power to repel misfortune. For Lee, it became both a link to his homeland and an inexhaustible source of artistic and spiritual resonance. Charcoal, for the artist, is time condensed. Each shard contains the memory of a tree’s life, transformed yet preserved, carrying the cycle of birth, death, and renewal within its blackened body. To polish it, to dissolve it into pigment, to assemble it into shimmering mosaics or monumental logs, is to listen to its language of transformation. His works are not merely constructed objects but meditations on impermanence and continuity, gestures that honor the rhythms of nature while transcending them. Living between Korea and Paris, Lee has, for more than thirty years, cultivated a practice that bridges worlds: East and West, formalism and spirituality, stillness and movement. His art thrives in paradox, in the play of presence and absence, of blackness that gives forth light. It is within this embrace of duality that the title Syzygy finds its resonance—the alignment of disparate bodies into a moment of balance and clarity. For this exhibition, the gallery itself has been transfigured. Its floors and walls are covered in immaculate white paper, a surface that recalls the care of traditional Korean interiors, where removing one’s shoes marks the passage into a space of mindfulness. Visitors enter with shoe covers, treading gently, as though stepping into a sacred threshold. Upon this paper, Lee has brushed sweeping strokes of ink, executed in situ with a quiet intensity. Each mark is less a spontaneous gesture than a distillation of breath and body, a crystallization of time and attention. Like calligraphy, these brushstrokes are acts of spiritual refinement: the tremor of the hand, the pause of the wrist, the subtle irregularities of motion become traces of presence, allowing chance to breathe life into form. Suspended brushstroke paintings extend this meditation, floating in the space as if between becoming and dissolving. The sculptures, at first resembling vast charred timbers, translate brushstrokes into three dimensions. Cast in bronze, they preserve the fluidity of ink while asserting their weight and permanence. They thrust outward from walls, occupy the floor, and draw the viewer into their gravitational field, collapsing distinctions between surface, line, and volume. Along one wall, the iconic “Issu du feu” works shimmer like constellations. Hundreds of fragments of charcoal are fitted together, grafted, and polished until they refract light in endlessly shifting ways. Here, black is not opaque but radiant, a material that both absorbs and releases light. Shadows drift across their surfaces, clouds of reflection form and dissipate. Each panel is alive, breathing in response to the subtlest changes in the room. As Lee himself has observed, “It is a black material that produces light.” What might seem a contradiction reveals itself as truth: black and white, fire and ash, matter and spirit, yin and yang. In Lee Bae’s art, these dualities do not oppose one another but fold into harmony, each illuminating the other. “Syzygy” is thus not simply an exhibition, but an experience of alignment—a space where visitors encounter not only works of art, but the quiet pulse of unity itself. It is an invitation to move slowly, to listen deeply, and to enter into balance with the rhythms of the world.
Photo: Lee Bae, Brushstroke A3, 2025, Bronze, 170 x 165 x 120 cm, © Lee Bae, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipperv Gallery
Info: Esther Schipperv Gallery, Potsdamer Strasse 81E, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 11/9-18/10/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.estherschipper.com/
