New York
Lee Bul’s genius lies, in part, in her ability to construct shapes that conjure a future in which architecture, human bodies, and machine parts have seamlessly merged. “The Anatomy of Every Setting Sun” (on view through October 24, 2026) juxtaposes three visually shifting bodies of work that press their shining bodies forward in eye-popping, unconventional ways while teasing out the nuanced undertones (from playful to ominous) of the exhibition title.
Four standing columnar sculptures, or cyborgs, open the show. Made from stainless steel armatures, extruded polystyrene, carbon fiber, urethane foam, epoxy, and acrylic varnish, these many-faceted forms manage to show off every distinct part while converging into a whole in the viewer’s eye. Their black and white surfaces “imitate” a range of monochrome traditions—from cave paintings and Asian ink drawings to grisaille works by Roy Lichtenstein and Philip Guston, as well as Japanese and Korean manga and anime. Miraculously, the black and white passages come together to take on silvery tones—even in photos—startling the eye with a kind of triple synesthesia.
In CTCS #3 (2026), stacked geometric shapes fuse with a set of spiraling stairs to echo Duchamp’s iconic Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. From the front, the form has one mechanical and one shapely human leg with stacked canisters for hips. It could be a fragmented Tin Man; from the back, it recalls images of Don Quixote—a comedic knight wearing kitchen pot armor. Though Lee’s early cyborgs from the 1990s often had hints of female identity, these works are more ambiguous, with many possible allusions and further identities to reveal.
Each form is headless. CTCS #4 (2026) has two appendages that protrude upward in a sort of V, calling to mind horns, machine parts, or arms. Some quasi-geometric parts are rounded; some have sharp edges. Just one oddly angled appendage sticks out from CTCS #5 (2026), an assembly of body and machine parts. CTCS #6 (2026) has two voids at the top. Each entity has its own particular tilt and gestures.
These seemingly cobbled-together works are all related to Long Tail Halo: CTCS#1 and Long Tail Halo: CTCS #2 (both 2024), Lee’s guardian figures for The Met’s Façade Commission, which blended the Winged Victory of Samothrace and dystopian visions into a cautionary worldview. They also recall and reverse Abortion, a 1989 nude performance in which Lee hung upside down in a harness. For two hours, she interspersed discussion of the taboo subject of her abortion with poetry, Christ on the cross, and pop songs—until the audience could no longer bear to witness her pain. In contrast, her four cyborgs are protected “bodies” shielded from whatever the present and future portend.
Installed alone in a grand gallery with a horizontal skylight, Willing To Be Vulnerable—Metalized Balloon (2015–16/2020) takes the form of a suspended, 56-foot-long, silver blimp-like machine facing a wall-size mirror. A chorus of headless nude male cut-outs with upraised arms seem to ride forth on unicycles from the mirror. These shadow humans may represent followers and promoters of the machine—the new, glossy big idea. Willing To Be Vulnerable makes a clear reference to the Hindenburg, which caught fire in 1937, killing 35 of the 97 people on board in Manchester Township, New Jersey. The title suggests that we all take risks by embracing technologies that promise to lift us up and improve our lives. Pieced together in rectangular sections with foil-like frames, the sculpture offers us hazy reflections of ourselves.
On the walls, collages composed of mother of pearl and acrylic on silk velvet resemble collapsed sculptures with micro-parts that obliquely “comment” on the cyborgs and the blimp. One series is titled “Perdu” (“Lost”). A.Q. Ver. L. #2 (2026), a fractal-like abstraction, includes the cryptic message “WEEP INTO STONE.” AI suggests that this phrase merges two moments in Luke 19: Jesus telling the Pharisees that stones would cry out if his disciples were silent, and Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. One might also think of the Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fire, Water game, in which water (tears) can wear away stone. Lee engages the mind and imagination in every way without letting us know her exact meanings.
