Welcome To The Collector’s Edge

Jeppe Curth 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge from Nordic Art Partners. Today's episode is about Li Bei, a Korean artist whose works has gained significant international attention in the recent years. With me in the studio is our art expert Nicholas Robeson. I'm your host, Yebekurt. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

And the piece is sold.

Nicholas Robinson 0:31

We've all heard about it. Sometimes it's front page news. Important works of art are being sold for incredible sums of money. But can you get involved and become a part of the exclusive club yourself? And how do you get started while avoiding buying the wrong things? That's exactly what this podcast is about. This is The Collector's Edge from Nordic Art Partners, a podcast for those of you interested in the mechanics of the art industry, want advice about putting money into art, or simply want to buy something for your walls to beautify your surroundings. Whatever your objectives, it is possible to put money into art wisely, to be considered, thoughtful, and well informed in your choices and actions. Welcome to the Art of Collecting with an eye for curated beauty and practical value. Hi Nick. Hello, Yebba.

Jeppe Curth 1:30

How are you doing? I'm very well. How are you today? I'm doing well. So today we're gonna talk about Li Bay. Yes. Could you, as always, start from the beginning?

Nicholas Robinson 1:42

Yes, so I guess we should give a bit of biographical information.

Jeppe Curth 1:47

That will be a good place to start.

Dansaekhwa And Finding A Voice

Why Charcoal Matters In Korea

How The Work Is Made

Issue De Feu And Infinite Blacks

Nicholas Robinson 1:49

Good. Alright. So firstly, let's summarise who he is and what he's known for. Libe is a prominent South Korean contemporary artist who has been widely celebrated for his minimalist abstract works, primarily utilizing charcoal as his medium. And uh these works made to sort of explore the cyclical nature of life, time, and also very specifically referencing his own Korean cultural heritage. So these works, they're always monochrome, always black and white. And so we're going to talk a lot about black and the nature of black today, since he has become renowned for his ability to imbue this black colour with incredible depth and intensity. So his biographical information, he was born in 1956 in South Korea, in Chongdo, in the aftermath of the Korean War. He was raised in a rural mountain region, son of a farmer, and his interest in art was sparked at around thirteen years of age when a teacher noticed his interest and skill and entered a sketch of his into a national competition. So this juncture he sort of understood, of course, that that art could be a vocational thing for him, and so he studied painting at Honkik University in Seoul, earning his BFA in 1981, and subsequently in MFA in 1986, but crucially while studying in Seoul, he studied under Park Siobo. And Park Xiobo is one of the founders of the Donsequa movement in South Korea from the 1970s. Now this name, this rubric is often translated as monochrome painting. And whilst it's not an sort of an official movement per se, with no manifesto or organizing uh central tenets, it's still essentially a way of grouping various disparate artists together whose work and ideas had some important things in common. Now all of these artists of this uh Donsequa ideology have their artistic practices centered around the constituent elements of mark, line, space, and surface, but from a very particular perspective that sought to prioritize the heritage of Korean art and abstraction in ways that were distinct to that region and in ways that of course consequently bore no overt similarity to the traits of Western art. Now, this idea and this this general aesthetic was promoted heavily in Seoul, Tokyo, and in the West largely through Paris, and this ensured that uh Don Sekwa grew to become the preeminent international understanding of what contemporary art consisted of. So in 1990, Libet he moved to Paris, mostly at the behest of his mentor Lee Ufan, another very significant artist of this first generation. And he moved to Paris because he understood Paris as a place rich in artistic heritage and somewhere where he could find or define his own artistic identity. Let's talk about his body of works and what he developed in Paris. Absolutely. So we've we've we've already understood that his work is minimal, abstract, and predicated on the various properties of black. So his he has numerous bodies of work, and across his his ouvre, you could say that he sort of blurs the lines between drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and even performance to some modest extent. And his body of work over thirty years now has become a very singular and distinctive contribution to this sort of always evolving language of abstraction. So we cannot talk about his work without having a clear understanding of the sort of profound influence of black and how his idea about black is derived from charcoal, this material of burned or charred wood. The area where he is from, uh Chongdo, charcoal is very deeply rooted in the local culture there as a symbol of protection, purification, community. They have an annual festival called a moon house burning, which is a ritual that takes place on the first full moon. And the villagers they all contribute pine wood to build a large house type structure that is then burned, and it's burned to wish for a good harvest for good luck, good health, and good luck. So this becomes a ritualistic celebration of renewal and the cycle of life. And after the ceremony, the citizens they each take away charcoal residue for a number of symbolic and I suppose you could say superstitious purposes. But charcoal has a wider role in the Korean society that he hails from. Charcoal has numerous functional purposes. Historically, it has been used in Korean building foundations to reduce humidity and vermin, and it's also used to filter and purify soy sauce and soybean paste. And a more direct reference, certainly vis-a-vis his work, is the fact that charcoal has traditionally also been a key ingredient in ink used in traditional Asian ink painting and calligraphy. So this is a key sort of mm material theme that has become the sort of dominant mode of exploration for Libet. And he he speaks a lot about it because of course his his work is very reductive, and this is a this is a significant uh leitmotif that he he's always asked about and discusses. So when he arrived in Paris, he said he said this. When I arrived, I wanted to make works of art, but painting paintings were too expensive for me at the time. So I bought a pack of charcoal for barbecue at the supermarket in order to make charcoal drawings. By drawing with and assembling pieces of charcoal together, I started to discover in France the Korean culture in which I had been brought up. In Korea we use charcoal when we make soy sauce and when we build houses. We bury charcoal in the ground and build a house on top of it. The ink used in calligraphy is also made of charcoal. I realized that I came from an important culture of black charcoal ink. Coal is the pure mineral that is left after having burnt out ordinary materials. For me, it represented the final form of all matter in the world. I wanted to show the properties of this pure and infinite material through my work. So we can see that artistically, for Li Bay, the material is charged and imbued with sort of multifaceted, symbolic cultural meaning. But also, from a purely aesthetic perspective, has a tremendous aesthetic richness and lots of expressive potential, which he derives from this relatively humble elemental material. So the the bodies of work that he's made exploring this are numerous. The first paintings that he made many years ago, around 30 years ago, are works that utilize acrylic medium, which is almost like a waxy, resin y kind of substance that sort of build you can pour and build up in layers, and it hardens into this sort of smooth, waxy surface. And what he would do is he would paint his gestural lines on the canvas, and then he would pour a layer of this viscous substance on top that would harden, and then he would the the the mark that was sort of showing through this translucency, he would then trace again, and then he would pour again. So you have this sort of layered mark making that looks very intuitive and gestural, but is much more sort of considered and studied, and then the layers accumulate, and of course, when you have layers like this building up, there's a certain kind of luminosity that is contained within the material, and so they have a they have a tremendous sort of physical warmth to them. So that was his earlier paintings. His first sculptural works were also made of charcoal, and he began these in 1991. Some of them, uh many of them, in fact, are these sort of sculpted oval forms with these little round apertures that he calls his birdhouses. And then there are numerous works consisting of these charred, these sort of bundles of charred logs that are sort of strapped and bound together. Nowadays his works mainly consisting of paintings on paper, so he uses this charcoal ink directly on a hangy, which is a a traditional handmade mulberry paper, so very thick with with very nice decaled edges. And the brush strokes that he he puts onto these pieces of paper also look or have the appearance or deceptive appearance that maybe they were made with some rapidity. But what he actually does is is that he sort of meditates for quite some time in order to prepare himself to make this single gesture, and once he has prepared his mind and body for this execution, he then transfers his idea of this gesture to the surface, and he does it in a very slow, methodical, fastidious way. So this b manner of painting is is is is sort of performative in that it is executed after he has meditated and and made himself ready to do this. So, in a way, these are very slow works, and they encapsulate time in a very particular way, in that in that you can sort of feel the time unfolding within the gesture. Time is also bound up in the preparatory drawings he makes for these. He practices the movement that he's going to execute, and he does it again and again and again, so that the gesture he is seeking to capture in the final work essentially becomes automatic or intuitive as a certain a sort of muscle memory, if you will. So that's another very distinct body of works. And in these works, actually, the paper is also key because the paper absorbs the ink, like in a traditional Asian calligraphy. So this ensures that the colour and the gesture actually becomes the surface rather than just sort of sitting discreetly on top of it. So the next real key body of work, I guess, that we've all become quite familiar with, and probably his international reputation is founded mostly upon, is called Issue de Feu, and that just means from fire or made by fire. And these works are a sort of hybrid sculptural relief slash painting, even though there's no paint in them or mostly in them. And what he does with these is he he has very lots of very small pieces of charcoal shards, and he aligns them in this sort of tessellated fashion on the surface of the panel. They are then grafted on and polished so that they sit side by side, covering the entirety of the surface with no spaces between them. And this surface shows a wood grain, it shows growth rings, and it shows how the properties of these natural patterns have become honed and highlighted by the fire. So this whilst the surface is superficially black, it's also sort of a graphite colour, silvery in nature, and it refracts and reflects light in various angles, creating a kind of shimmering living surface. The first of these works he made in the late 90s, and they became a key part of his practice by around 1999, I s I think. And and he has a very interesting comment about the nature of and the charcoal that he uses in these, and he says this he says, Coal is black, but there are infinite hues to it cold black, warm black, clear black, cloudy, dense black, deep black, shallow black, transparent black. Black absorbs all colours and lights, but charcoal reflects light. It is the only black material that produces light. So this gives you a real insight into what he considers the intrinsic physical properties and how he utilizes them in his art. And the material in fact is so important to him that he actually makes his own charcoal. So vital are the properties, and so interested is he in controlling and shaping the properties that he has a kiln in which he makes charcoal. And this is this is how how he does it, he says. The colour of charcoal varies according to the type of wood you burn. I choose and burn the trees myself in order to better reveal the properties of this material. The furnace in which the coal is baked is made out of ochre soil in the shape of an igloo, three meters in height and three meters in diameter. I burn the wood in it for about fifteen days, and then let it cool for another fifteen days. It is like baking pottery. At the end of this process, only carbonized wood is left. So that's, you know, sums up his approach to the materiality of his work. And one last body of work I suppose that he he may yet in a very significant way, I've seen quite a lot of them, are these bronze works. Now these bronze works are also blackened with their patina, and what they do is that they they sort of freeze in three dimensions a brushstroke that he has made. So you know they have the they share very closely the properties with the gestural properties of of his other works, but they of course are in a a new kind of materiality that he's recently started to explore.

Jeppe Curth 16:51

Okay, so let's jump straight into his market and which galleries is representing Li Bay right now.

Nicholas Robinson 16:59

Well, there's numerous galleries that have shown his work, and he's been a pretty ubiquitous presence in South Korean galleries for 30 years or so. And currently he shows with a couple of galleries in in South Korea. One is called Joyun Gallery, which is one of the larger galleries there, and another gallery called Wuson Gallery. A lot of his secondary market sales are taking place in South Korea, so he's a significant figure in the sort of gallery art ecosystem in that part of the world. But also what's mainly interesting for us is to see how his work and his market is is transcending that and and is percolating into the Western market, which of course is what we mostly participate in. And in the West he what he shows with Perotan, the the very sort of large Parisian gallery that has satellite branches all around the world. That's a very powerful gallery that I think sells a lot of his work. Certainly when we go to art fairs, his work is always prominently displayed in their booth. So I imagine he's a significant producer for their gallery economy. And then as of the end of last year, he also shows with Esther Schipper in Germany, and she's you know one of the more prestigious galleries in Germany. She's an like Power Tan, she's also a gallery that participates in art bars and has done for many years. So you know he's he's working with very credible galleries. Maybe you could say one below the very, very top tier of galleries, but certainly galleries that have the ability to connect with the best collecting markets in the world.

Jeppe Curth 18:53

Okay, and and could we maybe talk about uh primary prices?

Auction Records And Recent Growth

Nicholas Robinson 18:57

Yes, of course. Well, there's quite a large range of works that he's he's making, as we've discovered. I mean, he's he he he even makes very great print works actually, where the quality of the black and the quality of the printing is is very much in keeping with the unique pieces. It's possible to pick up addition works for eight to ten thousand dollars. Some of the unique small works on paper can be had for fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, anything more substantial from a meter is starting as sort of forty, fifty thousand, up to more than a hundred thousand for larger brushstroke works on paper. Now, even though these are paperworks, they function ostensibly like paintings, of course, in that this is the primary support that he works on these days, and they're two metres, two meters twenty tall. So they have the you know, they have the same presence, if you like, as a substantial canvas, even though their surface is is paper. And then we come to the issue de feu works, the the sort of charcoal collage works, and they start at around sixty thousand dollars for uh something around ninety centimetres, and they go up to around two hundred thousand euros dollars for two-meter work. So they're the primary market prices.

Jeppe Curth 20:22

And if we look at the secondary market, his auction price on auction is wooden charcoal on canvas sold in 2021,$370,000 for uh 170 times 260 centimeter work. How does this sound to you?

Korea Today And Global Demand Next

Nicholas Robinson 20:39

Well, that's that's also an issue differ work um when you call it charcoal on canvas or panel. That's what they are. Well well I well, I'm not surprised. I mean, these are the thing that has sort of supercharged his reputation these last few years. If we look further at his auctions, we can see that 23 of the top 25 works are issue defer works. Further to that, 27 of the top 30 prices he's achieved at auction for this particular body of work. And all of his top 10 prices, irrespective of the type, have been achieved since the end of 2021. So we can see that the last five years has become a significant period of growth. And if we look at the top 10 prices for these issue defer works, we see them selling two, three hundred thousand dollars. I mean, there's several that have sold for more than a quarter of a million dollars. And these are works that on the primary market are costing maybe around$190,000. So we can see that they're achieving anywhere from sort of 20 to 40, 50% above primary market price in the resale market. And this, of course, is because there's a there's a highly inelastic supply, there's a lot of demand. There's a waiting list for new works for the various from the various galleries, or with the various galleries, I should say. And so, you know, this is this is the key tenet of a a flourishing secondary market.

Jeppe Curth 22:12

We also see that a bit over 90% of the sales is still in South Korea, his home market. How do you see that in terms of the global market?

Nicholas Robinson 22:28

Well, we see his work, you know, we see his work in Basel, where where the whether that's taking place in Miami or Basel or Paris, we see his work at Fries, we see his in London, we see his work in Madrid at Arco. You know, there these works would not be brought to these venues if there were not a ready market for them. Now, of course, you could argue that they're seeking to develop a market, but of course, you know, these are significant galleries who who understand how to build interest in an artist's work. And you know, his work is quite ubiquitous whenever we travel around the world, we see it often. So so clearly there's a an international global market for the work, and and probably a a lot can be achieved by continuing to develop that that market. I mean, I suppose that if you wanted to sell a work by Libe at auction at this point in time, it would make sense to sell it in a Korean auction, or it would make sense to sell it maybe in in in Hong Kong. But I don't see why that won't change, and even if it doesn't change, there's obviously a lot of demand there when you see the prices. So that is a good sort of exit opportunity if you had something that you wanted to sell.

Jeppe Curth 23:51

And I also think that that is spot on in terms of his you can see on his annual growth that since 2015 have been eight point six percent, but the last five years have been eleven point nine percent.

Nicholas Robinson 24:04

Okay, well, yeah, that shows the going from local to global sort of acceleration in the in the in the market and the growth that his his work can enjoy, yeah.

Jeppe Curth 24:18

So if you are a collector, why should you buy Libet today and what kind of work?

Nicholas Robinson 24:25

Well, I I think that you know obviously in Issue de Fer work, I mean, they are extraordinary. They're mesmerizing, I mean, in the same way that you can get fixated by staring into a flame or a fire. I mean, these are I mean, of course, the result of a fire, but no less compelling. The surface is just full of infinite variation in texture and light and movement. I mean, they're incredible. So physically, there's just nothing like them. And of course, when an artist is able to achieve a very signature aesthetic achievement that is truly original and like something you've never seen before. And of course, and if it looks as good as this looks, then then it's it's very striking. So I mean this would be the obvious. I think I think there's a there's a number of works that he he makes where he takes these issue defer works and then he makes these these sort of white oil stick or chalk lines on the surface. So you have this really interesting contrast between the surface material and then gesture, and then the the two the black and the white contrasting with each other. And and those works are a little bit less in demand, but because there's the sort of artistic intervention, you know, I think there's there's a strong possibility that they will become a bit of a an interesting niche subset unto themselves in the future, and maybe they're a little bit easier to get and maybe worth looking into. And then his brushstroke works, you know, the works that he he makes where he's sort of got this very meditative approach to to making his gesture. Of course, you could argue the merits of one painting versus another, some are more poised, some are more dynamic, some are a bit more interesting or complicated, some sort of fold in on each other in this sort of ribbon-like way. I mean, I suppose a complicated one is a is a an interesting thing to strive for. But uh but I think those two bodies of work are the are the works that I would be most interested in in acquiring for myself, certainly.

Jeppe Curth 26:37

I don't think the question is if Li Bay is an opportunity, but why is he uh an opportunity?

Nicholas Robinson 26:44

Well, he's an opportunity because his work is extremely good, because his work is not especially highly priced when compared to his peers of similar standing. I think the fact that he's an Asian artist as instead of an American artist means that he's still a bit more of a niche artist, and there's opportunity as mm as more peripheral geographies, if you will, become folded into the mainstream art world more and more. Now, I of course this has largely happened, but there is still a discrepancy between an American artist and a Korean or a Japanese artist or an Indian artist or a Brazilian artist for that matter. So so I think any artist who who has achieved a signature breakthrough and who has become you know a substantial name on the international scene does represent an opportunity. I think there's there's there's increasing likelihood of greater parity across the prices, irrespective of where an artist comes from. There still is yet to be properly addressed.

Jeppe Curth 27:54

Yeah, I would also say that uh if you look at the market data going from a more local and being very very big in South Korea and going more global, there's a lot of growth opportunities there. So anything missing?

Nicholas Robinson 28:10

No, I don't think so. I mean, often we talk about where where it's possible to do a bit more research. The galleries that I mentioned, they've all got nice They can call you. They've got yeah, they could call us. They've also got the galleries, they've got nice little spiels on their website, of course, illustrating somewhat wide array of examples of works that he's made. There are some really nice videos on YouTube. If you just put sh put in the name Li Bay, you'll find these really nice, largely promotional videos made in in conjunction with gallery exhibitions. But these show him working, they show his technique, his methodology, they show the works installed, and and they show him speaking about his work, which is is really, really nice and and somewhat compelling to listen to, to listen to the narrative that he puts forth about his own work.

Jeppe Curth 29:06

That was it for this episode of the Collector's Edge. If you are looking for expert insights, want to make informed decisions, and would like advice from independent advisors, send us an email or maybe just call us. You can find all the info on our website, NordicardPartners.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope to have you back for another episode. Bye.