The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo

South Korean artist Lee Bul (born 1964, Yeongju, based in Seoul) has transformed the iconic niches of the Museum’s Fifth Avenue facade with four new works that challenge what sculptures can reveal about our times. Responding to the facade as a site for statues, Lee’s towering sculptures are at once classical and contemporary, forthcoming and elusive. This arresting ambiguity, expressed through amalgamated bodily, mechanical, and architectural archetypes and personal and collective memories, explores how history can be admired as well as destabilized.

With a career that spans four decades, Lee is known for her sophisticated use of both highly industrial and labor-intensive materials, incorporating artisanal practices as well as technological advancements into her work. The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo is the artist’s first major project in the United States in more than twenty years and the fifth in the series of contemporary commissions for The Met Fifth Avenue’s facade niches.

The Genesis Facade Commission is part of The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist’s practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met’s audiences.

Presented by

Additional support is provided by the Korea Foundation, Janice Lee and Joseph Bae, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky, the Director’s Fund, the Kahng Foundation, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, Helen Lee-Warren and David Warren, and Jerry Speyer and Katherine Farley.