Can two artists born in the same year, worlds apart, and never having met make work that is eerily similar to each other? That’s the premise behind one of the more thoughtful and introspective collateral events at this year’s Venice Biennale. The two artists in question are James Lee Byars and Seung-taek Lee, both born in 1932, in Detroit and in Kowon (present-day North Korea), respectively. Their parallel interests extend from the material and the immaterial, the performative, the literary, the celestial and the lunar, the wind and breath. More than anything, they are both artists whose work has never fit into neat categories or movements but with practices that prized themselves on being open ended.
At the Palazzo Loredan, the seat of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, these two artists are presented in conversation. Curated by Allegra Pesenti, the exhibition acts as a follow-up to one staged last fall in London at Michael Werner Gallery, which represents the Byars estate and has provided the major support for the exhibition, along with Gallery Hyundai, Lee’s Seoul gallery. In some rooms, Pesenti has intentionally mixed works by the two artists that can make it difficult to immediately determine whose work is whose.
“Sometimes the conversations are eerily similar,” Pesenti told ARTnews during a walkthrough of the exhibition, which runs through August 25.
