In his early works, Lee Kun-Yong explored fundamental questions about the nature of art: What is painting? What is sculpture? What is the essence of an artwork, and where is that essence located? Using his imagination as transit, he set off on a journey into the past. Through his series of thought-experiments, he conveyed his realization that painting is nothing more than the rendering of an illusion on a flat surface, and that sculpture begins when natural objects are somehow manipulated by human hands. For Lee, this moment of rediscovery represented nothing less than the rebirth of art. It is not uncommon for contemporary artists to present objects that do not immediately strike us as artworks.

Such objects only emerge as artworks through the coexistence of the object, the exhibition space, and the viewers. In such a situation and in such space, the works of Lee Kun-Yong enter into a relationship with you, the viewers, and through the relationship, artworks are born. Then, through those artworks, we are engaged to contemplate the natural world and human action, with particular focus on the infinite interactions between the two.

Indeed, since the early 1970s, Lee has utilized the body as the core axis of his work, beginning with Corporal Term (1971), which he first presented at the exhibition of Korean Artists Association held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, which was then located in Gyeongbokgung Palace. Lee himself has cited Corporal Term as the foundation for all of his artwork. Corporal Term views the body as the mediator between the external world and the internal self, a basic idea that permeates all of the installments in the Body Drawing series.

Corporal Term consists of a large cube made from dirt, with the roots and lower part of a huge willow tree extending out of the top. Based on the title of the piece, Lee clearly intended for it to be read within the context of phenomenology. He stated that Corporal Term serves as the starting point for a “phenomenological way of seeing the body,” which takes the window for seeing the world away from reason and returns it to the body. The cognitive system is generally thought to consist of the eyes and the mind, but Lee wanted to separate that system from objects and materials. Lee first presented Corporal Term to an international audience at the 8th Biennale de Paris in 1973.