Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present Lee Bul’s fourth exhibition with the gallery, on view at 201 Chrystie Street from May 2 through June 21, 2014. Further expanding her exploration of the intrinsic tension within utopian idealism, Lee will present new sculptural works and a largescale installation in this exhibition. The artist’s practice of employing formal, architectural and theoretical concepts continues with this show, inviting the viewer to reassess humanity’s vision of a perfect future.

From the beginning of her career, Lee has investigated idealized conceptions of the human form, delving into issues of beauty, corruption, decay and humanity’s desire to transcend physical, intellectual and spiritual boundaries. Alternating between the utopian and the dystopian, this narrative of perfection, evinced most prominently in the works of her Cyborgs series (1997–2001), is informed by Lee’s experience of South Korea’s meteoric rise to modernity in the second half of the 20th century. With vibrant complexity, Lee’s work reveals the tension embedded in our collective notion of progress: the fraught, intertwined relationship of man, technology, and nature. For example, Monster: Black (1998; reconstructed 2011), which viewers encounter when entering the exhibition, depicts a biomorphic form riddled with structures that recall tentacles or multiplying limbs. Behind the seductive shimmer of the sculpture’s sequined skin, however, loom dark anxieties about the proliferation of biotechnology.