The Invisible Affinities of James Lee Byars and Seung-taek Lee

Speaking of impossible encounters, of comparisons that draw inspiration from universal, immaterial and invisible connection points, the one between James Lee Byars and Seung-taek Lee certainly intrigues. At first glance, the two artists seem very distant from each other. If the American conceptual artist JLB drew great inspiration from his formative experience in Japan for his artistic research where he immersed himself in the study of the arts of ceramics, papermaking, calligraphy, Noh theater and the aesthetics of Shinto and of Zen, the cultural traditions and ceremonies of Japan that have strongly shaped his artistic development and concerns around beauty, truth and the concept of the perfect. Seung-taek Lee on the contrary did everything to de-Japaneseize his artistic practice by trying to shape a new Korean art form that would get rid of the cultural yoke that the Rising Sun had on his motherland due to the long domination which took place between 1910 and 1945. Yet the two galleries that were inspired by the idea for this exhibition, the Michael Werner Gallery in London and the Gallery Hyundai in Seoul, may have been right. In the end, it is a vision and a kindred spirit that unites the two artists both born in 1932 and if it is true that Byars and Lee never met, the aesthetic similarities in their art are so evident as to deserve further study.