Currently based in Seoul, Lee Bul is one of Korea's leading contemporary artists. She first became known for street performances incorporating provocative soft sculptures of her own design and then went on to create sculptures and installations commenting on contemporary culture and aesthetics.
After making the "Cyborg" and "Anagrams" series, which deconstructed idealized approaches to bodily form during the latter half of the 1990s and the first half of the past decade, Lee began a series of works reflecting on the legacy of utopian Modernism with the installation "Mon Grand Recit" (2005), incorporating models of iconic early 20th-century buildings into a delirious landscape accentuated by flashing LED displays.
Her new permanent commission for the Hara Museum ARC in Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, "A Fragmentary Anatomy for Every Setting Sun" (2010), continues the artist's exploration of Modernist thought. The large-scale installation features a menacing vortex of architectural forms — some resembling flattened skyscrapers, others suggesting fragmentary details — sculpted in relief in a polyurethane panel that is sandwiched between a mirror on one side and two-way reflective glass on the other. Viewers peering through the glass are sucked into an infinite regression of images. Displayed in the museum's entryway, the work both beckons and reflects visitors as they approach the building.