‘We are thrilled to welcome Lee Bul to Hauser & Wirth and are honored to work in collaboration with BB&M to bring this remarkable artist’s achievements to ever wider international audiences,’ says Marc Payot, President at Hauser & Wirth. ‘Lee is recognized as the foremost Korean artist of her generation. Combining conceptual rigor and a nuanced approach to materiality with a deep and profound humanism, her work continues to evolve in fascinating new directions. Lee has expressed admiration for artists in our gallery’s roster, in particular Phyllida Barlow and Louise Bourgeois, and points of connection within our program. Now in the fourth decade of her career, she is seen as a pioneer by younger generations of artists who are deeply influenced by the sensibility of her early work, her iconoclastic performances and the multi-sensory installations that expanded the formal and conceptual boundaries of visual art. We look forward to our presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong, to Lee’s first exhibition with us in New York next year, and to our collaboration in the months and years to come.’

The gallery will present a sculpture ‘Untitled (Anagram Leather #11 T.O.T.)’ (2003/2018) and a new diptych painting ‘Perdu CCIX’ (2025) by Lee in the gallery’s presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong in March 2025. While Lee’s installations and sculptures often embody a metallic, even futuristic, aesthetic that aligns with the tropes of modern technology and science fiction, her two-dimensional works explore different realms of technique, seeking to challenge and expand the prevailing understanding of technology through multiple approaches and viewpoints.

The artist’s upcoming projects include a major touring survey co-curated by Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, and M+, Hong Kong. It opens at Leeum Museum of Art in September 2025, followed by a presentation at M+ in March 2026 before touring to other international venues.

About the Artist
Lee Bul (b. 1964, Yeongju) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea. Having graduated from Seoul’s Hongik University with a BFA in sculpture, she made early breakthroughs to create multi-faceted, provocative works that crossed genres and disciplines exploring themes of beauty, corruption and decay. Some of Lee’s now-iconic works from this period were considered integral in the emergence of a global contemporary art of the 1990s, as advocated by supporters of her work, influential curators including Harald Szeemann, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Okwui Enwezor. Lee’s ‘Majestic Splendor’ (1997), an installation featuring decomposing fish adorned with sequins that was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was selected by Szeemann for his Venice Art Biennale exhibition in 1999, ‘dAPERTutto’. The same year, her karaoke installation ‘Gravity Greater Than Velocity I, II’ (1999) and ‘Amateurs’ (1999), featured in the Korean national pavilion and she received honorable mentions for both projects.

Lee continued to examine the body’s relationship to technology during the early 2000s creating sculptural hybrids of machine and organic forms. Her Cyborgs and Anagrams series explored our fascination and anxieties surrounding the techno-utopian ideal of perfectibility; while recalling the mutable, extracorporeal soft sculptures she created for her early performances.

Since then, Lee’s work has increasingly explored the enduring themes of utopian modernity and the rise and fall of progressivist projects, influenced by her own experience as the daughter of political dissidents during Korea’s turbulent social and political transformation. Following an artistic residency in New Zealand in 2005, Lee embarked on a series of sculptures and related works on paper and canvas furthering her artistic inquiry on the ruins of historical projects to build a better civilization. Lee’s current practice continues to delve into this expansive topic, reflecting on the ‘melancholic traces’ of these failed progressivist ideals.

Lee’s work is held in prominent public collections throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; British Museum, London; Musée d’Art Moderne Grand Duc Jean, Luxembourg; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; M+, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. She is the recipient of the 9th Ruth Baumgarte Art Award (2023); Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2022); Ho-Am Prize in the Arts (2019); Insignia of Officier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2016), presented by the Ministry of Culture, France; and the Noon Award (2014), presented by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. She was awarded a Menzione d’Onore (1999) for her contribution to the 48th Venice Biennale.