Being a representative sculptor among the second-generation sculptors in Taiwanese art history, Lee Kuang-Yu achieved fame in the Taiwanese art circle at an early stage. His artistic achievement was widely recognized by the academic circle in the 1990s, and his works were frequently seen in major exhibitions, such as the Asian International Art Exhibition and Singapore International Sculpture Exhibition. However, the general public’s understanding of his art has been stereotyped and limited to his early works. One of the reasons is due to Lee’s long creative career. If one does not examine his work in a long period of time, it is easy to overlook the gradual evolution of his work. Moreover, Lee’s work has been simplistically categorized by the Taiwanese art circle as classic sculpture of the “academic school,” one-sidedly emphasizing his solid academic skills without looking into other facets of his work.

In this essay, to address the key subject of the “void,” which Lee has persistently explored, I juxtapose and study his sculptural creations from 1980 to the recent time (2013 to 2016). Through analyzing Lee’s four stages of developing the concept of the “void,” I have discovered that the “void” conveys various meanings and functions differently in Lee’s work. More importantly, it has gradually evolved into a core concept in his work and encompassed different levels, ranging from the level of plastic, formal beauty, to the level of sculptural, spatial concept, to its artistic implication, which denotes the level of human existence. His “void” not only conveys aesthetic and philosophical meanings, but also touches upon the social implications of art. To my surprise, this clue that leads to the “re-discovery” of Lee has not been widely discussed.

After several visits to Lee’s sculpture garden and studio in the mountains of Xizhi in Taiwan, I have become more certain that, during half a lifetime of artistic creation and continuous efforts, Lee has never stopped refining and developing his artistic ideas. His long artistic career, rich creativity, and diversified work are tremendously rare. What is more precious is that his works all stem from the same system, which is founded on its historic connection to the twentieth-century Western sculptural art and seeks innovation and changes of the sculptural language. Moreover, it has incorporated the Oriental thinking and culture as well as its aesthetics, forming a highly recognizable, distinctive style and concept. In this essay, I hope to objectively reveal the major features and core meanings of Lee’s work and demonstrate his artistic concept and value to provide an example for the creation and study of contemporary sculpture.

1. The Language of the “Void” and the Realistic Period

Lee Kuang-Yu was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1954. After he graduated from the Sculpture Department of National Taiwan Academy of Arts (now National Taiwan University of Arts, NTUA), he continued his study in Spain. After graduating from Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Lee obtained his MFA degree from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In 1983, he returned to Taiwan and began teaching as a lecturer at Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA).

During Lee’s school days, Taiwanese sculpture had undergone a transformative process of exploring sculptural language and material, and shifted from realistic representation to abstract expressionism. In terms of artistic concept, it had experienced the process of progressing from academic art to modernism. The first generation of Taiwanese sculptors, like its representative, Huang Tu-Shui, mostly studied in Japan. They adopted a realistic approach to portray the native subjects of Taiwan, and created the first group of classic works in the history of Taiwanese sculpture. In the 1950s, the Western waves of modernist art influenced the modernist movement of Taiwanese sculpture. In the 1960s, NTAA founded its Sculpture Department. The education provided by NTAA’s College of Arts became the main force of nurturing future sculptors and spreading modern art concepts. In the 1980s, artists of Lee’s generation, including Lee himself, had mostly finished their studies and returned to teach in Taiwan one after another, forming the backbone of the academic education in Taiwanese art colleges. These artists were exposed to all kinds of modern sculptural concepts, and converted their learning into the undying fire of the “Taiwanese modernist school.”

Among these artists, Lee was definitely a benchmark figure of outstanding achievements. When he was still in Spain, Lee had been known for his excellent realistic skills, which won him a scholarship that Spain’s Ministry of Culture awarded to five art colleges in the country. He had also participated in the Spain Fall Salón. His talents could be detected in his relief work, Night (1980). However, Lee was not content with realism; instead, he had actively absorbed the essence of Western modernism. Regarding this, in my opinion, there were two factors that influenced the later development of Lee’s personal style. The first was Cubism, and the second Expressionism. Furthermore, Lee had also studied the simple, abstract style of Western sculptors, such as Henry Moore.

To begin with, Cubism appeared in France in 1908. Although it started with painting, this important artistic thinking had extensive influence on the twentieth-century sculpture and architecture. While Picasso represented Cubist painting, Ossip Zadkine, Henri Laurens, and Archipenko were representative Cubist sculptors. Even Picasso’s sculpture carried overt Cubist characteristics. The principle of Cubism was to deconstruct and dissect the image of an object, and then reconstructed it to achieve the result of not relying on the fixed viewpoint of the physical eyes when looking at things. It shattered the limitation of the perspective and portrayed a more complete image of the subject. I think the thinking of Cubism has had profound influence on Lee. The artist once said,

“When I was studying in Spain, I created a work, called Reed Pipe (1981). However, Professor Francisco Toledo Sanchez broke and bent part of the work, which produced a different effect. It was extremely inspiring for me to break and saw a part off to search for new possibilities. With the deletion, the rigid and precise form could be deconstructed, assembled, and reconstructed, which allowed a series of works to be developed in a continuous manner.”

In this passage, the terms “deconstruct,” “assemble,” and “reconstruct” all reminded people of the Cubist manifesto. Later, in Lee’s notes, he tried to use his own words to sum up his artistic realization. For example, he gave the process of “deconstruction” the name of “deconstruction as innovation,” and described the spontaneous “reconstruction” of dissembled wastes and fragments in the following words, “inspiration could be found everywhere without searching outward.” He also mentioned an anecdote.

“One of my friends kindly washed a cup for me but accidentally broke it. She was very upset because the cup was quite expensive. I picked up the fragments and placed them on my desk to admire. Later, I combined these fragments into a cup that could be seen through; it was lively and special. Many of my works did not possess a sense of liveliness after I completed them. So, I smashed them on the ground or sawed them into pieces to reconstruct them. The liveliness of the reconstructed forms exceeded my imagination and surpassed my habitual thinking.”

This showed that the mode of thinking imbued with Cubist characteristics has been incorporated into Lee’s artistic creation and became part of his artistic system.

On the other hand, Lee was also attracted to the style of Expressionism, which regained popularity after WWII. Existential sculpture master, Alberto Giacometti, and Spanish sculptor, Josep Maria Subirachs, respectively abandoned Surrealism or the tranquil, elegant “Mediterranean style,” and adopted the elongated, twisted human body to express people’s traumatized psyche in the post-war era. One of Lee’s early work, Scratch (1981), exemplified his attempt in adopting the Expressionistic approach. The sculpture of a goat bore scrape and scratch marks of different depth. Its docile posture contrasted to the intense, emotional traces left by the artist. In my opinion, Lee had identified with and absorbed the core spirit of Expressionism. In other words, his work had been exploring a certain form or method that allowed him to express his feelings of life as well as the profound experience of human existence through the subject he portrayed.

Generally speaking, during this period (from the 1980s to the 1990s), although Lee mainly created realistic works, he was not satisfied with realism and was influenced by Western modernism, such as Cubism, Expressionism, and the abstract style, which contributed to an inner force to break through the confinement of realism. In addition, one could not ignore the fact that, in his practice of realism, Lee had already begun exploring the concept of the “void” and its formal language. On the one hand, Lee was good at creating an aesthetic mood enriched with an Oriental charm. In the Oriental aesthetics, the artistic mood lies in between the real and the void as well as the concrete and the abstract; the “charm” is a subtle, reserved form of beauty that emphasizes on portraying movement through stillness. For instance, By the Wind (1991), Mountain Hike(1995), and Running Water (1997) have adopted subtle twisting in form to reach an implicit balance of the sculpture’s internal tension between movement and stillness. These works have obviously touched upon the Oriental aesthetics of the “void.” However, in terms of form, they have not physically embodied the “void.” Obviously, Lee did not stop at portraying such Oriental tranquil beauty.

On the other hand, Lee had repeatedly reduced sculptures in the round to a flat “surface,” which was carved with lines to depict the subject matter. For example, in The Smoker (1999) and The Woman with Plait (1999), the concave and convex of the faces were largely reduced and replaced with relief-like, intaglio lines to delineate the facial features. Two sculptures created in 1998, The Flatted Man and The Flatted Woman, were named after their flatness, signaling Lee’s study of the flat surface. The flat surface showed that the artist was influenced by the early Western modern art, and had furthered his exploration of sculptural concepts as well as sculptural forms in space.

In summary, Lee was clearly different from other “academic” sculptors. His realistic style was established on his absorption and transformation of the Western modernism, which he combined with artistic techniques and aesthetic ideas that possessed personal characteristics. Judging from the existing works from this period, Lee did not simply imitate a certain style or school, but followed his own artistic path while conducting multi-faceted explorations of the sculptural language and gradually developing his own style. Comparing to his works from other periods, this stage marked the beginning and served as a foundation for his unique language of the “void” that would gradually evolve.

2. Exploration and Formation of the Language of the “Void”

Lee’s works from the end of the 1990s to the recent years were created in a period that spanned the artist’s middle age to the age of sixty. Throughout these years, he had shouldered the mission of teaching and mentoring a new generation of artists at NTUA. It was until his retirement in 2006 that he could finally fully concentrate on artistic creation. For Lee, this important period of his life had contributed to his creation of several important series of works, including his Hand series, Mountain Emptiness series, and other series.

Lee’s works from this period were largely related to the subject of the Oriental culture, especially Buddhism, Zen, and Taoism. In the Hand series, Holding Out a Flower (1999) and The Five Perceptions (2007) not only had titles related to Buddhist thinking, but also adopted the gestures of Buddhist “mudras.” His recent works, such as Clairvoyance (2016) and Clairaudient (2016), had borrowed Taoist mythological images. How could we understand Lee’s referencing to and artistic transformation of the Oriental culture? Since about the year of 1984, Lee had begun learning Tibetan Buddhism, and later, practicing with a practitioner in Taiwan. For Lee, “the learning of Buddhism has influenced how I look at things. Buddhism is similar to art. Both discuss the questions of human being and their principles are interchangeable. The process of practicing the Dharma offers solutions to the problems in life as well as brings artistic inspiration.” In my opinion, we could not simply view this group of works as a mere adoption of the Buddhist images or the formalistic beauty of Buddhist sculpture. Instead, we should look into how Lee has deepened his understanding of the “void” and discovered the possibility of expressing the aesthetics of the “void” from his practicing of Tibetan Buddhism and Zen as well as versing in the Oriental culture.

The “void” forms the fundamental doctrine of Buddhism. The Heart Sutra states that “all things are empty. Nothing is born, nor die; nothing is pure, nor stained; nothing increases, nor decreases.” To interpret it from a secular perspective, Buddhism considers the essence of all things to be constituted of the “void,” which does not refer to nothingness but a “space” that gives birth to things. The “void” contains infinity, and comprehending it enables one to understand the truth of the universe as well as life. From a larger perspective, the concept of the “void” is completely integrated with the Oriental culture. For instance, Taoism has the notion that “being and non-being are complementary to each other,” upholding the idea that all things come from the unification of the two extremes and conceptualizing the “void” from an aesthetic point of view. The crucial Japanese aesthetic notion, “wabi-sabi,” originates from the three sings or proofs of a Hinayana sutra (non-permanence, non-self, and nirvana), and centers on the Zen thinking of emptiness, which states that “all is void.”

My conjecture is that Lee’s awareness of the form of the void in sculpture probably comes earlier than his realization of the concept of the void. I have mentioned earlier that when Lee was in Spain, he had already become familiar with Henry Moore’s sculpture, which was known for the “hole.” However, the “hole” created by the Western sculptors like Moore did not really inspire Lee to create any works. Therefore, they did not have immediate connection with his sculpture. Lee’s unique form of the “void” was developed in a special way by himself, in which his employment of the Oriental culture and Buddhist sculpture had an important effect. I have noticed that Lee’s exploration of the “void” underwent four stages from its germination, to his using of the Buddhist elements, to his personal reflection on the society. The first stage is “destruction as innovation.” The second stage is “the Buddhist subject and the openwork in sculpture.” The third stage is “from the openwork to the silent void in the Oriental culture.” Lastly, the fourth stage is “the open void,” in which he eventually creates his powerfully individual artistic style and means of visual representation, which could be detected in all of his recent works.

(1) Destruction as Innovation

To discuss the beginning of Lee’s language of the “void,” we need to go back to his early works. It is mentioned that some of his early works have been given expressive texture. For example, parts of Hiding the Treasure (1995) had a rather coarse surface. The artist intentionally kept the marks of molding, scraping, and carving. Moreover, the figure lacked half of its head and legs, rendering the work more perfect in its imperfection. Sometimes, the destruction surfaces as crevices on the surface of the work. For instance, A Hand it Seems (1986) carried cracks and imperfections that were suggestive of the appearance of holes. By the Wind (1991) had an opening on the right side of the palm. These works have embodied Lee’s initial attempts in using “destruction as innovation.” More specifically, he achieved a sense of perfection in form through the cracks and openings, which foreshadowed the appearance of the “openwork.” Therefore, this stage could be said to pave the way for the language of the “void.” This artistic technique was invested with personal aesthetic characteristics and established a style of contemporary sculpture.

(2) The Buddhist Subject and the Openwork in Sculpture

In this stage, Lee had continued his previous experiment while incorporating Buddhist subject into his art-making and studying the form of Buddhist sculpture, such as Buddha heads and hands. Lee collected many Buddhist statutes in his studio. Among his works of the Buddhist subject, Transcendental Existence created in 1990 was noticeable. This work reminded us of a Buddhist stupa. The difference lay in the niche, which should have been used to place a Buddha statue. However, it was transformed into a “hole” on the Buddha statute itself. The Buddha statue was, therefore, turned into a sculpture that connected its internal and external spaces, for which the “hole” had a tremendous effect. Although Transcendental Existence was more of a Buddhist statue rather than a work of his personal style, Lee had refined this artistic design ten years later and created Transcendental Existence II (2001), in which he had a more artistic treatment regarding the work’s form and the “hole.” The shoulder of the “Buddha statue” became more like a mountain whereas the shape of the “hole” was more similar to a mountain cave. Obviously, the “hole” in this sculpture embodied the form of the “void” as well as delivered its conceptual meaning. From this work, Lee also went on to create Empty Mountain (2006) and Empty Mountain II (2007); and finally, in Empty Mountain III (2008), the “hole” has completely transformed into a formal language of the “openwork.”

The evolution from Transcendental Existence to Empty Mountain provided us a distinct clue to understand the development of Lee’s work. I believe that Lee has found inspiration in the forms of Buddhist stupas, niches, and caves, and developed the approach of “destruction as innovation” into his openwork technique, integrating the concept of the “void” in the Oriental culture with his understanding of the “void.” To be more specific, he combined the form of the “hole” with the volume and space of sculpture, and created a space of the “void.” This space was not formalistic but possessed perceptual significance for the artist.

(3) From the Openwork to the Silent Void in the Oriental Culture

Since 1999, Lee began to have a strong interest in the “hole,” and repeatedly tried out the effect of holes in non-Buddhist subject and form. For example, in Teapot Rooster (1999), he connected a rooster’s comb with its tail, visually forming a large hole. In Contracted Belly Woman (1999), he created a “hole” on the human body. The form of this work was simple and refined. He did not sculpt the arms and legs, but opened a hole at the center of the upper torso and delineated the face with lines. It was a representative piece from the period when Lee’s style was changing. After 2000, Lee’s openwork technique had become more mature. Works like The Clouds (2007) and By the Lotus Pond (2007) had distinctive openwork features. Another example would be Jade (1998). The hole at the center of the palm was still represented as a kind of a niche, in which there were two Buddha statues. Comparing Jade to another work derived from it, Wandering in the Misty Mountains (2013), the latter already had a fully open “hole,” constituting the openwork while the Buddha statues were replaced by clouds, conveying a more profound artistic concept. However, one should not ignore that the form of “openwork” in Wandering in the Misty Mountains differed from the geometric “hole” created by Henry Moore. Lee’s “openwork” was of a more non-geometric, irregular, organic shape; a sculptural language of the “void” that seemed more characteristic of Lee. The artistic concept it conveyed was utterly different from Moore’s geometric “hole.” This meant that Lee had departed from the general “openwork” technique and moved towards depicting the “silent void of the Oriental culture,” which carried more specific meanings.

(4) The Open Void

Lee’s recent work (from 2013 to 2016) revealed a new structuralist tendency. In terms of techniques, he has changed from using plaster and clay for molding shapes to using a range of different techniques, such as welding metal sheets together, bending plastic sheets, puncturing holes, etc. In terms of form, he creates a combination of metal sheet structure, mass structure, and openwork. I have mentioned that Lee experimented on the flat surface in an earlier period. In 2008, he created the work, Goddess of the Earthly Creations, which displayed a mixed form of flat sheet structure and bulky mass structure. His recent works have embodied the culmination of the sheet structure. Moreover, Lee has integrated mature openwork techniques into these works, allowing us to see a unification of various artistic techniques. Drum Dancer (2013), Taichi (2013), and Subduing (2014) demonstrated Lee’s strong artistic style and visual language. If Lee’s works before the current period have shown a more realistic style, it is clear that he has now broken the rules of realistic sculpture and added more abstract elements and features of modern civilization. For instance, he added industrial elements, such as iron wires and sheets, in Empty Procession (2014). In his latest work, Bull Fight (2016), Lee seems to have found an almost perfect way to articulate his formal language. The maddened “bull” appears to only have a structural frame without any excessive volume. There are even openwork details on the structural frame, enhancing the transparency of the work. In my opinion, Lee has already surpassed the simple “openwork” at this stage, and begins to deal with the issue of sculptural space on the level of sculpture’s essence.

Essentially, sculpture refers to the three-dimensional form that uses an enclosed mass structure to inhabit a space. However, Lee’s flat sheet structure and the openwork have dissolved the sense of volume. These structures no longer occupied the space with their weighty volume but signified the existence of space with parts that were opened up or removed. In many of the works, such as Drum Dancer (2013), Taichi (2013), and Wave (2013), the heads of the human figures were only in half or compressed into a flat surface. If half a block mass, a surface, or a line could reveal space, why would one enclose it? At this stage, Lee has opened up the previously enclosed space and removed excessive volume as much as possible to create more “holes.” In his own words, this “allows the work to fully open up, extend, and exist in space.” Through opening up the internal space of his sculpture, Lee has practically created more “facets,” more perspectives to look at his work, and more transformation of space. Audience’s experience of a sculpture is not limited to the external surface anymore; instead, it enters the interior of the sculpture. Their eyes not only linger on the contour of the sculpture but also constantly traverse and penetrate the work. In works, such as Thinker (2014), the enclosure of the sculpture’s interior has almost gone, achieving an extremely ethereal, tranquil state; a state that we might call “the open void.”

3. The Concept and Contemporary Value of the Language of the “Void”

As mentioned earlier, the language of the “void” has substantiated Lee’s work and become his unique characteristic. By understanding this language, one can comprehend the artistic meaning of his work. I would like to compare Lee’s “void” to the similar concept of a few Western sculptors, and examine the unique meaning of Lee’s language of the “void.” I believe that Lee has reached a core concept in Western modern sculpture, but digressed from it to find his own path, which ended with his unique interpretation of the “void” as well as his breakthrough in artistic language and concept.

Taking a retrospective look on Western history of modern sculpture, it could be traced back to the master of sculpture, Rodin, and various schools that came later, such as Surrealism and Cubism. At the beginning of the twentieth-century, sculptors like Jean Arp and Alexander Archipenko started to puncture holes on their works. This significantly meaningful technique fueled the progress of sculpture and ushered in a new possibility of sculpture. The importance of this technique was manifested through the relationship between sculpture and space. Generally speaking, a sculpture is a three-dimensional entity that physically exists in space. It creates its own space while being surrounded by the space inhabited by its spectator. The space of the sculpture and the space of the spectator exist at the same time without penetrating each other. However, when the sculptors created “holes” on their works, the two spaces became connected. In other words, the physical space inhabited by the spectator penetrated the physical space of the sculpture.

Henry Moore has been considered the artist that perfected the concept of “holes.” During his artist career of more than sixty years, he kept exploring the internal and external space of sculpture. As early as 1932, Moore had created the first sculpture with a “hole,” which unified the front and back of the work. Through utilizing the “hole,” he had also formed his aesthetic viewpoint on the void. He argued that the internal void of a form possessed independent meanings. “A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. —There is something mysterious implied by a hole.” In Western theology, it is said that God is the sole guarantor of integrity. On the contrary, Moore’s incomplete human figure with a hole has reflected the human condition after the death of God.

Existential sculpture master, Giacometti, did not use “holes.” However, the relationship between sculpture and space had been a topic he cared about. With tiny, thin forms, Giacometti reduced the volume of sculpture to its mere structural frame. He called this approach “to trim the fat from space,” which achieved the effect of opening up space, a result similar to opening “holes.” The difference was that the space of the sculpture has shrunk, forming a contrast to the physical space of the spectator while reinforcing the sense of solitude and nihilistic mood in Giacometti’s work.

In the 1960s, minimalist artists like David Smith and Richard Serra continued the investigation into the relationship between the void and the substance. For example, Smith considered his sculpture to be constituted of a series of spaces. In these spaces, the void and the substance should be treated equally. The “void” referred in minimalistic works was no longer the “hole,” but what lay in between the repetitive units in an exhibition space. As minimalist artists gradually blurred the boundary between sculpture and installation, and went on emphasizing the relationship of site between works and space and the concept of the works, a major shift began to take place in the course of Western modern sculpture

Lee’s exploration of the “void” has started from the concept and language of sculpture. On top of the core questions of “spatial relation” addressed by Western modern sculpture, Lee has added his delineation of the “void” in Oriental culture. He has discovered another type of formal language and aesthetic concept of the “void” that differ from Western sculpture. It is what I have termed “the open void.” For Lee, firstly, the “void” is a sculptural technique that renders the existence of a sculpture more interesting. It also breaks the common conception of a sculpture being “an enclosed mass structure.” Secondly, Lee adopts an approach to create the “hole” on his work that is different from the means adopted by the aforementioned Western sculptors. He does not simply make a hole or use the technique of “openwork,” but makes efforts to open up the interior of sculpture to a greater extent. The result of this persistent excavation of the sculptural interior is an image structured with fragments. Thirdly, in this fragmentized image, the “void” is not “carved out”; it exists. The fragmentized image contrarily reveals the existence of the “void.” It is because the “void” can only be defined by its opposite in a dichotomous, dialectical relationship, it is difficult to describe it. It can only be revealed indirectly. The “void” is the negative form opposite of the positive form, the illusion opposite of the substance, emptiness opposite of existence, absence opposite of presence, spirit opposite of matter, the other opposite of the self. Lee’s sculpture has successfully formulated a concept and form that allows people to perceive the “void.” It also reveals the dialectic principle of the world, in which everything has two sides and they are complementary to each other. Lastly, Lee’s “void” has created a fresh sense of space. In his sculpture, the inside of a sculpture is turned outside, and vice versa. It forbids the spectator to uphold a fixed, external perspective and assumes a dichotomous role of the subject to look at the sculpture as the object. On the contrary, the spectator’s line of sight follows the sculpture, traversing the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional planes, as well as the fourth dimension of time. The external space inhabited by the spectator and the internal space of the sculpture unite as one in one singular existence. In short, this is the “silent void in the Oriental culture” that embodies the state of object-self unification.

In summary, in “the open void” of Lee’s sculpture, there is no sign of mysticism. It is different from the nihilistic sentiments of existentialism. Contrarily, it conveys the implications of the Oriental philosophy. For Lee, the “void” not only possesses artistic value, it also has contemporary social value. He once said, “space is the expansion and contraction of form. The void can correspond to the world we experience. After removing excessive delineations in work as well as piles of garbage in life, what is left is something that resembles a matchstick. Its space becomes boundless. The bigger void one embraces, the more clear-headed one becomes.” In this passage, Lee compares the space of sculpture to a person’s living space and spiritual space, stating his contemplation on and critique of the contemporary society. Lee believes that “in contemporary art, there are too many monsters. They are the results of anxiety, uncertainty, and aloofness in this world. A wise person observes, comprehends, and transcends the limitation of the popular ideas in this era, and returns to his original intention.” The way to return to one’s original intention lies in the open space; “to release the state of mind that needs no veil.” In contemporary society, the existence of human being is enveloped by excessive worries and desires. The “void,” to a certain degree, can restore the unnatural state of life. Again, I would like to quote Lee’s notes: “We need to remove obstacles that create difficulties in artistic creation or in life; to expose them so that we could further pursue truth.” No matter in life or in artistic creation, Lee hopes to remove the obstacles to the mind and perception through his sculpture, and return to the original life in an open state.