Reenactment of Burning Performance

For seven decades, Seung-taek Lee has been making works that expand the possibilities of painting and sculpture even as they unsettle the boundaries separating art from the world.

Combining the preoccupations of Land Art with traditional Korean ritual practices, Lee’s work often collaborates with natural elements—fire, water, wind, and smoke—and makes use of symbolic objects ranging from tree branches to hanji paper, stones, rope, and wire.

In Burning Performance, Lee’s own work became the material that is transformed by fire into art. In 1989, the artist built a pyre of his paintings and sculptures and set it alight. Here the alchemical process by which matter is transformed into a work of art is reversed, with human creativity subordinate to the natural world. This bonfire of the vanities served as both a provocation and a statement of intent: the foundational act of what Lee would term “non-art.”