By Joseph WANG
 PhD, Histoire de l’art et archéologie, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
 Former Dean of the Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Normal University
 Professor, Department of Industrial Design, Shih Chien University

I. On Form and Appearance

“Form”, from Latin forma, denotes an entity or state of affairs that is both abstract and concrete. So all-encompassing is it in its scope that not even the whole content of the universe can eschew some relationship with it. I will not, of course, enter into the problems of “form” tout court, because to do so would be an exploration of a bottomless abyss of complexities. Even to treat of “form” in artistic creations or works of art is already to enter a thicket of complications. However, when regarding the sculptural works of Lee Kuang-Yu, not to talk of the problems of “form” is an absolute impossibility. In any event, there is a well-developed body of past literature discussing the subject of art and form, that has laid clear paths for research and speculation.

Well-known commentators have discussed the relation between form and art from widely different perspectives and viewpoints, even contradictory ones. The poet, writer, and literary critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) wrote, “All created form, even that which is created by man, is immortal. For form is independent of matter: molecules do not constitute form.”1 It is clear here that Baudelaire’s interpretation of form derives from his perspective as an exponent of Romanticism. In a similar vein, the writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885) wrote, “Form is the essence brought to the surface.”2 In 1957, the Nobel Prize recipient Albert Camus (1913-1960) wrote, “To create is likewise to give a form to one’s fate,”3 bringing a markedly existentialist emphasis to the discussion, personifying creation and form. The English poet Robert Graves (1895-1985) wrote, “Art of every sort… is an attempt to rationalize some emotional conflict in the artist’s mind,”4 touching here on the emotional link between the artist and form. André Malraux (1901-1976), brought his logical perspective to bear on his unprecedented “Musée imaginaire” when he wrote, “What is art? It is that whereby form is transmuted into style.”5 He pointed out a definition of form, namely that when form becomes the proxy or representative of the artist, a style naturally emerges, and the latter thus fulfils their creative function, and the result is art.

1 “Toute forme créée, même par l’homme, est immortelle. Car la forme est indépendante de la matière, et ce ne sont pas les molécules qui constituent la forme.” (Charles Baudelaire, Journaux Intimes)
2 «La forme, c’est le fond qui remonte à la surface. » (Victor Hugo)
3 «Créer, c’est aussi donner une forme à son destin. » (Albert Camus, from Le Mythe de Sisyphe)
4 « Toute forme d’art est une tentative pour rationaliser un conflit d’émotions dans l’esprit de l’artiste. » (Robert Graves, On English Poetry, XIV “The Daffodils”.)
5 «Qu’est-ce que l’art ? Ce par quoi les formes deviennent style. » (André Malraux)

The great French man of letters Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), in the final twenty years of his life, played the role of eminent observer of the events of the day, as well as political ideologist. In one of his political writings he wrote, “Everything is form, and life itself is a form”.6 By way of Balzac’s perspective, the art theorist, historian, and critic Henri Focillon (1881-1943) held that all human activities had their peculiar forms, and aesthetic activity was naturally no exception. He discussed form in works of art in his book Vie des formes (Paris, 1934), intended for a popular audience. His general thesis was introduced here in Le monde des formes [“The world of forms”], where he reiterated that “life is form, and form is the mode of life.” His argument revolved on four axes: 1. Forms in space (Les formes dans l’espace); 2. Material forms (Les formes dans la matière); 3. Mental forms (Les formes dans l’esprit) and 4. Temporal forms (Les formes dans le temps). In a chapter entitled Éloge de la main (In praise of the hand), he also wrote about the intimate connection between the artist’s mind and the paired hands; by contrast, dexterity of the two hands also enhances the mind’s form-shaping capacity.

6 Balzac: «Tout est forme, et la vie même est une forme, » cited in Henri Focillon, Vie des forms, 8th ed., Quadrige/ PUF, Paris, 1984, p. 2.

Focillon was born in Dijon, France, and although he died when he was already past seventy, as theorist and art historian his style of reasoning and his research methods won him increasing recognition. His brand of formalism, even if little discussed at the time, nevertheless attracted many followers later on, such as the French art historian Jean Brony (1908-1995) and the American art historian Robert Branner (1927-1973), both of whom contributed outstanding work in the study of German architecture. However steeped in the German philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), which was a feature of American academia at the time with its focus on symbols in artistic idioms, there continued to be scholars who were devoted to Focillon’s work, such as George Kubler (1912-1996), Charles Seymour, Jr. (1912-1977), and George H. Hamilton (1875-1948). The continued his focus on the work of art itself, widening historical horizons in a far-reaching and profound way. Focillon was indeed an original scholar, and with his specialized treatment of form he occupies a special place in Western art, and the research field he opened up has extended to Asian religious art as well.7

7 Henri Focillon, L’Art bouddhique (Buddhist art), Paris: H. Laurens, 1921.

This writer discovered that the attitudes and views held by Lee Kuang-Yu toward the concept of “form” closely approximated those of Focillon’s in many respects. The two may have been poles apart in terms of their times and their backgrounds, with not a single point of contact, but in their ways of thinking, there was a meeting of minds, a kind of “telepathic communion” would be one way to explain it. I had, in fact, been acquainted with Lee Kuang-Yu quite early on. Although I was fifteen years older than he, we had both begun teaching in the Fine Arts department of National University of the Arts in the same year, in 1984 (this was the predecessor of the present-day National Taipei University of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts). He had returned home to Taiwan after studying sculpture at the Complutense University of Madrid, and I had returned, at the request of the National Science Council, from the Sorbonne in Paris where I was researching Western art history. Although I had a full-time faculty position in the Fine Arts department of National Taiwan Normal University, I taught part-time at the National Taipei University of the Arts, teaching there once a week. But this was at its former location at the Luzhou National University Preparatory School, until it was moved to its new location in 1991 in Guandu (I later resigned that position due to the long commute between Taipei and Guandu). In the eight years that I was there, I often had occasion to have discussions with him in the faculty rooms or on the bus, and later as well, speaking with him at various extracurricular meetings or reviews. I also visited his studio in Xizhi and his sculpture park when it was only just beginning, so I was no stranger to his works or to his views on life.

For the present article, I again went to Lee Kuang-yu’s studio to exchange views with him, in order to gain an understanding of his new works, and of the relationship between their forms and the developments in his creative thinking. With his assistance I produced a simple “Notebook” out of this.8 His sculptural production is essentially the manifestation of a concrete mode of living. In his own words, he says, “I seldom go down from here. My life is very simple. It just consists of making sculpture, and landscaping and planting trees in the sculpture garden. I apply my thought process and reasoning about sculpture to the creation of the garden, and the concepts of space in the garden reflect back into my sculptural work. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is take a walk in the garden, through the greenery, and while I am relaxing I can see the distant mountain opposite. The mountain is an existence that is eternally stable, and yet is as fleeting as a cloud, and in that way the mountain’s entire form can transform. When I am out in nature, I experience the mountain’s changes, and experience the reason behind change itself. And I have a special sense of the change within myself. The original śūnyatā or void changes the mind into a plenitude, and this is what the artist is engaged in.”9

8 On August 24, 2014, accompanied by the ceramic artist Lillian Tseng, I went to interview Lee Kuang-yu’s at his studio and sculpture garden. The original interview was recorded, but due to the less-than-optimal recording quality, I had to rely on the notes of my assistant Lu Yahui to remember, so there may be slight discrepancies.
9 See the above note, and cf. Lee Kuang-yu: Mountain Emptiness, video of solo show, Cini Gallery.

As an interpretation and instantiation of Focillon’s “life is form, and form is the mode of life,” nothing could be closer than Lee Kuang-Yu remarks here! For Lee Kuang-Yu, “form” or “creating form” is an identification with the natural development of the individual mind and intelligence that takes place in life itself, and, by means of matter or materials, it is expressed within the tension between spatiotemporal categories. In itself it is both creative activity and philosophy. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the French exponent of Naturalism, was correct in his statement that “Form gives birth to the idea” (« De la forme naît l’idée. ») and Focillon pursued this vein more deeply in the chapter “Éloge de la main,” where he writes: “But the relations between the spirit and the hand are not a simple as that between a master and a docile servant. The spirit makes the hand, and the hand makes the mind. The non-creative gesture, the gesture without issue provokes and defines the state of consciousness. The creative gesture exerts a continuous activity on the inner life. The hand arrogates the sense of touch to its receptive passivity, and organizes it for the purpose of experience and action. It teaches man to possess extensibility, weight, density, number. Creating an unprecedented universe, it leaves its mark everywhere. It measures itself with respect to the matter that it transforms, with the form that it transfigures. As the teacher of man, it multiplies him in space and time.”10 Thus, for both Focillon and for Lee Kuang-Yu, “spirit” and “hand” are coterminous and not subordinate the one to the other. Each fosters the other, each grows the other.

10 Henri Focillon, Vie des forms (Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 1984, 8th ed.), p. 128: “Mais entre esprit et main les relations ne sont pas aussi simples que celles d’un chef obéi et d’un docile serviteur. L’esprit fait la main, la main fait l’esprit. Le geste qui ne crée pas, le geste sans lendemain provoque et définit l’état de conscience. Le geste qui crée exerce une action continue sur la vie intérieure. La main arrache le toucher à sa passivité réceptive, elle l’organise pour l’expérience et pour l’action. Elle apprend à l’homme à posséder l’étendue, le poids, la densité, le nombre. Créant un univers inédit, elle y laisse partout son empreinte. Elle se mesure avec la matière qu’elle métamorphose, avec la forme qu’elle transfigure. Educatrice de l’homme, elle le multiplie dans l’espace et dans le temps.”

With regard to the “image”, and what is called the “phenomenal image” or “formal image” (“image” coming from the Latin imago, imaginis), it is actually inseparable from “image”. It manifests some type of material thing, animal, person, or mental thought or concept through the conduit of visual perception or mental activity. “Phenomenal image” may arise naturally, as with a shadow or a reflection. It can also be manmade, as with a painting, sculpture, or photograph. Whether said entity is visible or invisible, tangible reality or conceptual metaphor, the “phenomenal image” can preserve a relationship of full identity to its originating motif, or contrariwise, maintain a more symbolic relationship with it. However, “phenomenal image” is a specialized term in semiology, or the semiology of blocks of visual symbols that it has developed into. Plato has given one of the most ancient definitions of this “image”: “By ‘image’ I mean first the shadows, then the reflections seen in water or on the surface of opaque bodies, polished and shining.”11 From this explanation of the concept of “phenomenal image” it already clearly emerges that the meaning that has been assigned it is insufficient. However, the sole unchanging concept here is that “form” and “image” are always integral; regardless of whether concrete or invisible, it does not achieve the status of a mental concept. In other words, “form” necessarily depends upon “image” to manifest itself or be perceived, and “image” relies on “form” to become defined or registered.

11 Plato: “j’appelle image d’abord les ombres ensuite les reflets qu’on voit dans les eaux, ou à la surface des corps opaques, polis et brillants.”

II. Space is the rhythm of sculpture’s life-breath

That sculpture is an art of spatiality should meet with no objection. Like architecture, it possesses three-dimensional volume, and substantially occupies a “shape” in material space. However, in Lee Kuang-Yu’s conception of sculptural space, he does not admit a definition of space as merely composed of the planes of length, breadth, and height, and approaches the planar quality of bas-relief, as in his Night, that ferments in an Albertian perspective.12Nor does he allow himself to be constrained or bogged down by whether the specific “form” and “image” will revolve around each other in a purely correspondent relationship with the surrounding space. When Lee Kuang-Yu began to investigate the structure of formal concepts of emptiness and concreteness, he looked at the relationship of “form” and “image” to space, and focused attention on the interplay between internal and external aspects of the work. Furthermore, when Lee approaches the relation between sculpture and spatiality, it is not a question to him of finding the most ideal, most appropriate, most harmonious place to locate and display the work, but rather of taking the work’s “form” as a living body, which will, from time to time, change in its material capabilities, and in doing so valorize the consciousness of change of this “form”. Thus the most ideal, most appropriate, most harmonious space will also automatically reshuffle these elements. On the other hand, external spatial fields are subject to changes in light and shade, the seasons, and time, which influence the durable state of the work’s “formal image”, thereby transforming the original tensions in the work, altering the scale of its life flow. For example, Lee Kuang-Yu’s 2013 work Across the Water use of the ronde‑bosse enameling of his early works. His early ronde‑bosse works were realist in their tenor, and revealed the skill and imagination of the sculptor’s in his grasp of “form”. Even though it showed deformity, he wanted to leave open a door open to tradition. Located on the platform of the National Taiwan University Hospital MRT station, Lotus Grip, it revolves around one theme: the Buddha’s hand grasping a budding lotus flower, symbolizing the Bodhisattva spirit within the medical profession of saving humanity. Lee Kuang-Yu’s inspired design leaves a gap in the Buddha’s third finger, imparting a deep feeling of volume and compositional logic, and preserving a connection with the traditional round Yuandiao sculpture.

12 The Italian Renaissance architect, painter, and mathematician Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) invented this method of perspective viewing in around 1435, and it is still in use today to render illusionistic three-dimensional images on a planar surface.

The work Across the Water obviously makes traditional Yuandiao carvings into a formal structural concept. It is a renewed search for a broad freedom to set structural “form” in a dialogue with new concepts of space. We are initially encountered with the works stylistic diversity: figurative and non-traditional Yuandiao round carvings of human heads, hollowed out and drilled, and simulacra of bodies standing in for the abstract entities “emptiness,” “concreteness.” In an even more Surrealist mode there appears the “phenomenal image” of the palm of the hand. Lee Kuang-Yu is in control of his formal aesthetics, which is to say he does not incorporate fixed principles; sometimes his images will represent classic Yuandiao of a typical sculptor giving consideration to a sense of bulk and fullness. He will make the form of the head very full, but in portraying the structure of the hair, the face, eyebrows, eyes, and eyelashes, he will adopt linear, “painterly” techniques, mixing them in a “sculptural” volume. With this freedom he can liberate the inherent Yuandiao that is in the formal sculptural concept, and he can also impart a rich vitality to the form of the work.

The interpenetration of the image of “emptiness” and “concreteness” in this open work by Lee Kuang-Yu is a new concept of space that cannot be taken lightly. The idea of using negative spaces in solid forms in modern sculpture was initiated by Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964), a US citizen who was born in the Ukraine. At the end of 1908 he went to Paris, where the Cubist movement was in its second year, and his concepts of the plastic arts tended toward geometrized forms. He then became close associates of the main advocate for Suprematism, Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and his student El Lissitzky (1890-1941). In 1912 he then invented the concept of empty, negative space within an artwork, and a new interpretation for the empty space within a sculpture that was no idle formulation. He wrote, “In art the shape of the empty space should be no less significant than the meaning of the shape of the solid matter.”13After him, there were the Russian-born French sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967) and the American Henry Moore (1989-1986). By using the image of emptiness and form of concreteness, they established the relationship between the inner and outer, and the interdependence of empty space and material substance. Zadkine’s Le poète ou hommage à Paul Éluard (“The poet, or homage to Paul Éluard,” 1954, Jardin du Luxembourg) is the artist’s work on the Surrealist French poet, completed two years after Éluard’s death. A first inspection of the work shows the influence of Cubism in the way surfaces reveal volume, but then the upper half of the body, from the chest to the navel, is penetrated by a hollow, producing an image of competition between the solid portion and the empty space. In other words, the figural image of emptiness is executed simultaneously with the concrete form of the composition; neither has priority, and there is no primary/secondary or guest/host relationship by which to distinguish them. Here negative space and positive space occupy the same level of concrete significance, just as the alternating cosmological Yin and Yang and the cycling of the universe, sometimes there is mutual coordination, and other times there is strife. In the 1930s, Henry Moore began to actively explore “piercing forms” and “open space,” and in his later works featured convex and concave spaces opening directly within his figurative forms. More precisely, “negative space” had priority within his finished concrete forms, or at least was firmly synchronized with them.

13 Rachel Adler, Archipenko, Rachel Adler Gallery, New York, 1993.
“In art the shape of the empty space should be no less significant than the meaning of the shape of the solid matter.”

Lee Kuang-Yu’s works combine, integrate, and transform the discussions and dialectics of negative and positive space in the three sculptors mentioned above. Extending this, a “transcendimensional space”, or positive-within-the-empty, is added. This is part of a new concept of space that he calls “context”. From the empty spaces seen within his work Refuge (2013, bronze, 39×31×73 cm) we can discover an ambiguous idea of spatiality in its “negative space,” clearly delineating Lee Kuang-Yu from the Western sculptors of the previous years in its treatment of the category of interpenetrating emptiness and concreteness. My reason for calling Lee Kuang-Yu’s concreteness-within-emptiness “transcendimensional space” is due to the fact that this concave space actually retains an oscillating contour, in form like the rippling of a mountain landscape. This topology also occurs in the human figure, and is not a bizarre oddity; it is an “alternate space” that is a cosmos that transcends the cosmos, a heaven beyond heaven. This is at the heart of the vitality of Lee Kuang-Yu’s sculpture, and in attending to this visual image, we hear its rhythmic pulse and breath.

III. Time is the chronicle of the event and the liberation of form

Conventional wisdom holds that the work of art should transcend its times in a kind of “eternity,” which means that for the visual artist, time is not the primary consideration. Regardless of the fact that since time immemorial, painters and sculptors have taken the changing seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter as their subject matter, and have embodied this in three-dimensional form, the principal question in their creative exploration has been that of “spatiality”. The only art-historical movement to emphasize the factor of temporality has been futurism, for example Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), in his Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913, bronze, 126.4×89×40.6 cm, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan). Futurism arose from a specific historical background. The glittering halo of the Italian Renaissance made Italy’s artists over infatuated with the grace and ideal beauty of ancient Greek culture, with the result that they eventually became indifferent to their own times and obstinately held to a kind of passéism. Thus, poet Filippo Tommasso Marinetti (1876-1944) published, in the February 20, 1909 issue of Le Figaro, his Futurist Manifesto, the fourth paragraph of which states: “We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its hood adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.”14The emergence of Futurism can thus be described, on the one hand, as an “event” arising from an aesthetics of force triggered by twentieth century civilization. On the other hand, it was also a “historical event” arising from particularities hat had accumulated for a long time within Italian history.

14 Le Figaro, February 20: “4. Nous déclarons que la splendeur du monde s’est enrichie d’une beauté nouvelle : la beauté de la vitesse. Une automobile de course avec son coffre orné de gros tuyaux tells des serpents à l’haleine explosive…une automobile rugissante, qui a l’air de courir sur de la mitraille, est plus belle que la Victoire de Samothrace.”

Focillon wrote, “To speak of the life of forms is inevitably to invoke the idea of succession.” He continued: “But the very idea of succession presupposes different concepts of time. Time may be interpreted in turn as a fixed norm of measurement or as a mere general movement, as a series of immobile happenings or as a continuous mobility.”15Historical disciplines dissolve this contradiction by means of definite structurations. History is research and investigation into past events, and if no framework of “time” has been adopted as a benchmark, historical research degenerates into meaninglessness, with no consensus about its proper task. As everyone knows, the three principal elements of history are persons, places, and times, and so the concept of time, for the historian, is an important means of research. Chronology, a basic framework for structuring history, is arranged according to decade, and in the investigation of peoples in their geographic locations, there are further subdivisions into particular events happening in every key moment in every year. Historians impose temporal boundaries of centuries for incidents accumulated across generations, and over the interval of one hundred years, observing their development and evolution, summing up the distinctive features of each century, and bestowing on each a particular formal appearance.

15 Henri Focillon, op. cit. p. 83: “Parler de la vie des formes, c’est évoquer nécessairement l’idée de succession…Mais l’idée de succession suppose des conceptions divers du temps. Il peut être interprété tour à tour comme une norme de mesure et comme un mouvement, comme une série d’immobilités et comme une mouvement mobilité sans arrêt.”

At first glance, art-historical developments would seem to follow the trajectory of historical ones. but artistic creativity is not a foundational historical event. However creative or revolutionary a work of art may be, its origin may be due solely to the individual artist and the fruits of his or her private reflections. It is not necessarily a reflection of the contingencies of its historical context (historicity), so that frequently, explanation will proceed in the reverse direction, and forms of thought be adduced to explain the historicity that is external to the work. This is because artists do not consider the thought processes behind artistic creation to be subject to any “progressivist ideology” in cultural history. This progressivist ideology adjudicates whether a society and culture is backwards or advanced according to directionality in time. So a more advanced epoch implies a social organization that is culturally more excellent and more complete. This “evolutionism,” adjudicating whether or not a society and culture is advanced in accordance with a timeline, actually contains an element of ethnocentrism, which has prompted the criticism of anthropologists and scholars in the human sciences such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009). Anthropologist, ethnologist, and philosopher, he was a seasoned academic and member of the Académie française. In 1971, on the invitation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) he gave a lecture entitled “Race et culture” (“Race and culture”) that earned a resounding standing ovation. The text of the lecture was published in the Revue internationale des sciences sociales (UNESCO, 1971/12). This text may be regarded as an amplification of a text he wrote in 1952 published under the title Race et histoire (“Race and history”). Levi-Strauss both acknowledges and applauds the ethnic differences that exist and have existed across different historical periods, denying the primacy of any evolutionism or progressive ideology. He steadfastly advocated cultural relativism, and the support of cultures that have been marginalized and face extinction.

There is indeed a sequentiality to history; different ethnic groups create their own history, accumulating their own culture. There is only difference; there is no precedence by age, nor any distinction between backward and advanced cultures. Of works that bear the weight of this macroanalysis, there are none more apposite than the sculptural creations of Lee Kuang-Yu. His Mouth goes from the Chinese pictograph to the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis in the western holy scriptures, covering the expanse of time that has passed since the origins of humankind in its diversity of history and cultures. By assuming the burden of temporal memory in this way, Lee Kuang-Yu is also responding simultaneously to postmodern thought. For him, “time” is “chronology,” the accumulated events of different epochs; the “form” is synthetic, it is open, free, liberated. Newer works, such as Intoxication is even freer and more untrammeled with respect to “form”. Like a Sui-Tang period figure, it resembles a human body wrapped in a lotus leaf, or more aptly, one that is formed from a lotus leaf. But the natural and dynamic movement that the human form should have is also of a piece with the natural form of the lotus leaf, and is vivid and lifelike in its taking on of both interdependent roles. It is both human figure and lotus leaf. This doubling of the body into non-homogeneous surfaces recalls the anachronistic illogic of Surrealism, a stark contrast with Cubism’s logic of simultaneity, where disparate components of homogeneous surfaces are presented at the same time.

Of necessity, the two elements of space and time must be bound together, and in Lee Kuang-Yu’s aesthetic concept of doubling of the body is the transformation of the speed of time into “pull” and “the symbolic,” but it is also a new extension of time into “conductor” and “carrier”. Wandering in the Misty Mountains (2013) is basically the palm of a hand, and in principle the hollow of the palm and the back of the hand form two surfaces of one body. This is not, however, the normal palm of a human body: both visual image and haptic texture of the hollow of the palm and the back of the hand degenerate, each allowing a qualitative change in the other, forming two heterogeneous surfaces in the one body. The hollow of the palm goes from bearing an abstract haptic surface to penetrating the “negative space” of the back of the hand. A new space is extended, and within this “negative space” appear symbolic clouds that lead the imagination of the viewer to a vivid image personified, of the ramifying peaks of a mountain range stretching to the end of the extended fingers. This hand thus becomes a “carrier” of Eastern philosophy, a mode of cultural thinking, and space-time conversion. Moreover, the form and image of this “carrier” wanders in the “indeterminacy” between abstract and concrete, and in the “deconstruction and construction” of space-time. This releases Lee Kuang-Yu’s works from the spirit of “postmodernity.”

In Flying (2013), admittedly, we are reminded of the Futurist artists alluded to above, because of the feeling of speed engendered by the figure’s seeming to throw itself at us, as Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. The spatiotemporal concepts in Lee Kuang-Yu’s works are expressed in his method of doubling of the body. Taking as theme the intimate embrace of heterosexual passion, the body is formed of several parts, constructed largely along the lines of the Yuandiao concept, and the forms of the limbs turn and intertwine somewhat like planes. This intentional deviation from the rational norms of anatomy and physiology ratchets up the tension of the work and constructs a random displacement to sustain the image and energy of movement and incessant transformation. Here, the flattening of the conjoined male and female heads is indeed a “carrier” of true “time”: One side of this surface is scored to reveal a man’s eye and cheek, which corresponds on the other side to a surface molded into a woman’s facial features. What is expressed here are not two different styles, but a symbol of the interchange of time and space, and figural form freed from logical constraints.

IV. Material is the flesh and blood of sculpture, and form is its activation

What goes by the name of material is simply material substance? The life of form is ubiquitous, and yet once form is unable to instantiate itself with the aid of matter, it remains a mere mental form. As Focillon writes, “To the extent that it is divorced from material, form is but a view of the mind, a speculation on extensibility reduced to geometric intelligibility.”16Artistic creations, particularly three-dimensional ones, are even more intimately linked with material substance. Without it there can be no work of art, and without material substance, there can be no way to know the appropriate form in which art will manifest. Thus, since ancient times, the spirit has been valorized over material substance in a philosophy of idealism, as well one that emphasized the dependence of the spirit on matter in a philosophy of materialism. On balance, spirit-matter, or matter-form, are antitheses, to some degree, but they are also interdependent to some degree. The transformation of material substance into an artist’s work of art is not something that logic can explain with its binary oppositions, however. Selection of materials and reflective judgment must take place in this artistic process. There must be speculation on the color of the materials, their density, texture, and patterns, and whether the artist can expect that these materials are adaptable to his or her formal language. Moreover, material substance is essentially the natural form, and this will influence the artist’s aesthetics and specific formal process. The creator’s abilities with respect to specialized techniques, ways of handling and applying the materials, and so on, are all factors that indicate the extreme complexity and subtlety of the processes by which material substances are transformed into works of art. Once this process has been completed, the material will never have the attributes it originally had. The wooden statue will never again be the wood of the tree; a large stone cut into a human figure will never be marble for the construction industry; gold, silver, copper, or other metals, once cast into statues, are already unknown metals and will never again be metal or in the seam of mine. The brick or pottery fired from the kiln no longer has a relation with their original clay. Material substances, although originally natural, are processed by the artist and afterward are transmuted into the artist’s expectation of “form” and “image” and no longer represent natural materials.

16 Henri Focillon, op. cit. p. 50: “La forme n’est qu’une vue de l’esprit, une spéculation sur l’étendue réduite à l’intelligibilité géométrique, tant qu’elle ne vit pas dans la matière.”

When we look at Lee Kuang-Yu’s works from 2013 until 2014, we see casual mastery and effortless success in his innovations in form and image. He shows attentive understanding, control, selection, and development of his materials. His investigations into the question of materials can be divided into two areas: casting and molding. To begin with the latter: At a deep level he recognizes that clay sculpture is not the sole method of molding. It is not even sufficient to realize or solve the problems of the forms he intends to realize. Radical transformation requires the destruction of the old. As for “ready-mades” or “assisted ready-mades,” Lee Kuang-Yu would gladly try them and publicly share them if they could assist his new aesthetic language. Many artists are unwilling to disclose their creative processes, but Lee Kuang-Yu is pragmatic and generous in this regard, and explained to this author his method of molding, and how he uses his materials. He said that often, because of requirements of a shape, he would bend a plastic backing into various shapes and forms, and then apply from 0.2 to 0.3 cm of gypsum paste, and after it had set he would remove the plastic backing, and thereupon apply surface texture to the gypsum.17It is exactly this process that is Lee Kuang-Yu’s unique “free-form creation”. Of course the forms he makes in this free-form creation is subordinate to the overall needs of his molding, in augmenting or lessening his structures and articulations. His process of molding involves incessant addition and subtraction (he prefers that subtraction should replace augmentation), and this lets him take advantage of a variety of materials. In this method it is impossible to know in advance the final form of the work. When a precise aesthetic intuition lets him know when to stop, having arrived at the form and image he was expecting, the molding process is complete. It is only at this point that the form is finished and born. The entire process is full of randomness, a postmodern notion of the sporadic, with innovation playing an intermittent role. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that the part played by the processing of surface textures also belongs to Lee Kuang-Yu’s concept of form, and is enabled by the material “carrier”: materials are scraped, rubbed, broken, cracked, made concave or convex, pitted, bored. The molding acquires an extremely natural character, as if tens of thousands of years had left their mark, and the signs of a historical memory. This way of processing material reminds this author of a Spanish artist who passed away only three years ago, Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012), whose way of processing textured surfaces was very much attuned to Lee’s.

17 Personal communication of Lee Kuang-yu on February 21, 2015.

The second area of Lee Kuang-Yu’s concern with materials centers around the bronze casting. After a mold has been completed, it is taken to a foundry where a bronze work is created from the cast through the lost-wax process. After cleaning, the surface is dyed and treated with verdigris, the main ingredient of which is basic copper carbonate. Using carbon dioxide or acetic acid gives the surface a green corroded layer, composed of the elements of copper, oxygen, and carbon, also called a patina. For a bronze to achieve this verdigris patina naturally would take a long time, at least 20 to 50 years. Once the verdigris is produced, it acts as an extremely high-density protective film, and also lends a historical aura or the flavor of a cultural artifact. The patina is not dissolved in water, but it can be using acid, so Lee Kuang-Yu uses acid to process the patina and change the color. This procedure is extremely important, as it can change the visual effect, the feel of the material, as well as the original texture of the material. It can intensify time, historical memory, and the cultural aura of the piece. Thus, having undergone this processing, the material is no longer a natural substance, the bronze having achieved the status of an animate, non-natural thing. To enrich the dialogue between materials, the artist may apply different metallic casts. For example, Setting Sun, is a sculpture in the round assembling a main figure with a decomposing surface, a construction that simultaneously enacts a human figure with drapery. The texture of the surface on which the figure reclines is multivariate, and is finished in a bronze cast. Elsewhere in the piece there are smooth curves that resemble a magic mirror reflecting deformations of the body, producing an illusory form of a block-like body. This portion is of stainless steel, while the bronze material is a dark brown, juxtaposed with the shining flashes from the stainless steel. This produces a visual contrast, a formal correspondence and interaction. For Lee Kuang-Yu, materials are the eternal flesh and blood of sculpture, and the key to vital forms.

V. Spirituality issues from the skilled artificer, the artificer creates spirituality

A pastoral-themed work full of western and traditional Asian religious stories, Calling Birds (2013) is both infatuating and thought-provoking. A shepherd, sitting on the back of an ox, one foot dangling to the ground and the other astride the ox’s back, is delineated in lines of movement that are flowing and graceful. He plays the reed pipe excitedly, a familiar sight, yet there is a hint of desolation and sadness. The form of the ox is even more dreamlike compared to the shepherd, having become a massive block, and from some angles its head is askew, revealing a crooked horn. In a conceptualized twining of bodies and limbs, it seems to be attentively listening to the main figure’s melody, like an Asian version of the god of music, Orpheus, with his temple on Mount Parnassus, surrounded by beasts and songbirds, charming the world with his music. How could Lee Kuang-Yu have created a fresh and unique sculpture with such aphrodisiac qualities? It impels the observer to sing with him in its spirituality.

The proverb “appearance arises from the heart” comes from a story in which the Tang Dynasty minister Pei Du (known as Zhong Li) encountered a Buddhist monk as a young boy, and is also a Buddhist saying, and in both uses it refers to the relation between one’s inner cultivation and one’s outer appearance. Over the past several years, Lee Kuang-Yu has been engaged with Buddhism, which has given him insight into various philosophies of life. He once told this writer, “I encountered Buddhism through reading Buddhist scriptures, which was not like in-depth academic study and interpretation, but rather was an inner experience of philosophy that I had not known about up to that point, or knew about only indistinctly.”18Over the years we have seen the Buddha’s gestures, sayings, statues appearing within Lee Kuang-Yu’s works in various different artistic contexts, enough to realize that the artist sees an overall, recurrent cycling from spirit to matter, from matter to creation of form, and from creation of form to spirituality. While it is true that “appearance arises from the heart” is a proverb that relates to human nature, it has a mysterious connection with the link between creating forms and spirituality. Reaching a mature understanding after a period of mental gestation, until the moment its ripeness is achieved, form will naturally and ingeniously appear if it has appropriate materials and when it is processed by the hand that is following the heart. When that period of mental gestation has reached a state of unalloyed maturity, creation of form is realized through the hands of the skilled artificer. The hands of the artificer constantly manifest the inner creation of forms, using the materials they encounter, with which they are familiar and which they understand through accumulated knowledge and experience. And this in turn purifies the mind again of the artificer. The proverb “spirituality issues from the skilled artificer, the artificer creates spirituality” expresses what Focillon, as described above in this essay, has said about the “life of forms.” I will therefore not go into too much detail, but simply analyze Lee Kuang-Yu’s recent work, to explain his new aesthetic, and the links between his spirituality and human relations.

18 Cf. note 8

In his 2014 work Thinker, Lee Kuang-Yu achieved a complete breakthrough from the Yuandiao sculpture-in-the-round tradition, deconstructing the fragmentary and the surface, and constructing an unprecedented negative space and positive space, creating a new image of the body: one that is both concrete and abstract, both real and surreal. This artistic context actually first began to take shape between 2008 and 2009, coming to fruition in 2013 and 2014, when Lee Kuang-Yu fully came into his own in a new era in his career as a sculptor. In the works we have sketched here, each individual work stands complete and independent, each manifesting a unique perspective without necessarily having to form into the various components of one person. But taken as a whole, there is a unifying thread in Thinker. Compared with August Rodin’s Le penseur (The Thinker,1840-1917), Lee Kuang-Yu’s work has a completely different history and cultural import. His is rooted in the seated meditation posture typical in Asia, being attentive and not confining oneself to formalities, flexible in letting go of restrictions on one’s spiritual nature, letting go of thought in favor of the Dharma.19Lee Kuang-Yu’s artistic context involves a renovation of existing conceptions of space, time, and materials.

19 In seated meditation, both legs are crossed, and this is called shuangpan, and also the Lotus position. Sitting with one leg withdrawn is called danpan.

Subduing（2014) interprets a serious metaphor in a free and leisurely way. The metaphor comes from Asian philosophy: “Using softness to conquer strength.” Lee Kuang-Yu play with surface and body reveals an upside-down body with both legs in the air, both hands grasping the back of a heroic tiger. The tiger and lion are kings of the animal kingdom; how can such ferocious creatures be so easily subdued by ordinary people? Combat with the mind is superior than fighting with the body. It is compassion, and not violence, that subdues the wild tiger. Whether man or tiger, Lee Kuang-Yu adopts satire and humor in his work, with the spiritual qualities of the sayings “overcoming the mind is harder than defeating a tiger,” or “using softness to conquer strength.” Subduing also alludes to the Buddha’s attaining enlightenment by overcoming the heart, in the proverb “cutting off worry and subduing the mind”. The important thing is that Subduing is an unconstrained and apt presentation, with a unique style that arises from a perspicacious mind, and practiced hands. In other words, “spirituality issues from the skilled artificer, the artificer creates spirituality,” in a virtuous cycle that bears positive fruit.

Empty Procession (2014) is a work inspired by the traditional Tibetan Buddhist dakini. Dakini signifies a female supernatural being with powers enabling her to travel through the sky, and represents wisdom and compassion. She also represents the female energy of sudden illumination. Lee Kuang-Yu had a clear spiritual understanding from religion, and naturally developed Buddhist wisdom and knowledge. This turned his hands into precise instruments creating the Dakini from his own heart-wisdom. With one foot standing lightly on tiptoe representing the masculine tortoise-deity, symbolizing harmony of yin and yang. The other foot is in mid-air and forms the lotus meditation posture with one leg. Both arms are spread wide to the wind in a splendid posture that possesses both spirit and contemporaneity, rich with rhythm and dynamism.

VI. Conclusion

“Form” is living. “Form” is a mode of life. Whatever is extant, whatever exists, exists for us in the mind, exists in the manifold of things. It lives contemporaneously with us, lives within historicity, and lives within the space of our imagination and our futurity. Lee Kuang-yu’s art shapes plenitude from the incomplete, and he has refreshed rigid definitions in the history of sculpture of carving and shaping. In Structuralist terms, out of fragmentary surfaces or levels of ineffability and indeterminacy, a postmodern Yuandiao sculpture is constructed both conceptually and formally. Tension and Surrealist imagery are his concerns, and with a constant dialogue between “negative space” and “positive space,” another “alternative space” is opened, an extracosmic cosmos, a heaven beyond heaven (Transcendimensional Space), at the heart of Lee Kuang-yu’s sculptural practice, through which we can hear its beating pulse and the rhythm of its breath.

In his concept of time, Lee Kuang-yu does not acknowledge any one-sided ideology of progressivism or evolutionism, but juxtaposes, in an anachronism of heterogeneous historical elements, different histories and cultures, mythologies and religions, traditions, proverbs. He thereby creates an image of a surrealism of categories, and a formal doubling of the body in changing time.

Material is the lifeblood of sculpture and is its corporeal form. Lee Kuang-yu attempts to create material juxtapositions in his works, seeking for different sculptural methods to transform the material textures and haptic qualities, and allowing Lee to instantiate his mental forms by processing surface textures: they are scraped, rubbed, broken, cracked, made concave or convex, pitted, bored, achieving an extremely natural appearance of having aged through history, a technique resembling that of the Spanish sculpture Antoni Tàpies.

In sum, Lee Kuang-yu’s sees technique and concept as two sides of one body. He continually cultivates an active spirituality, seeking knowledge and aiming at lofty spiritual goals, and his artistic practice follows suit. On the other hand, continual spiritual practice can become a substitute for the practice of creative art and the accumulation of experience of technique, and this makes the creative ideal ever loftier. Considered from this panoramic survey, this author can only offer Focillon’s statement that “spirituality issues from the skilled artificer, the artificer creates spirituality,” in tribute to the achievements and approbation he has earned from his assiduous efforts.