SLOW WATER Seulgi Lee

Upon entering, the sound of metal balls clanging against each other resonates throughout the gallery. For a moment, you imagine yourself at the controls of a pinball machine like those painted by Wayne Thiebaud in 1962. However, there are no flashing arcade machines; instead occupying the space are three wooden sculptures entitled BAGATELLE. Crafted by a Parisian woodworker, they are white oak reproductions of a Bagatelle board, an indoor table game invented in the 17th century and an ancestor of billiards and Japanese pachinko. The game consists of an tilted board with balls that fall into holes drilled in various places, while brass spikes arranged in arcs disrupt the ball’s path. At first glance, the three boards presented here bear the same characteristics as the original object: similar scale, rounded contours, metal spheres, and a cue to propel them. However, upon closer inspection, the small pins scattered across the three game boards form geometric structures different from those appearing on the historical model. Indeed, the semicircular arcs give way to a more complex geometry. Circles, diagonals, and triangles are drawn between the holes whose backgrounds are painted with colors historically associated with the avant-garde: red, blue, yellow, and green. The studded lines trace the simplified contours of a woman's body, like a wink to the trou-madame, a medieval version of the Bagatelle game. We remember the perforation boldly covering Marcel Duchamp's piece The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even (1934). Here the female body is more than naked, it joyfully welcomes the metal marbles directed by the skillful cue. Seulgi Lee's game, which presents itself as a social device for the audience (the artist deviates from the "Don't touch the artworks" rule somewhat), seems to crystallize the early modernist ideals in its questioning of the double dichotomy between art and life, and art and craft. Seulgi Lee entrusts the craftsperson with their drawings and photographs of the object, asking them to produce the game boards. The artist is interested in the discrepancies that occur during the elaboration and production of the work: the original model was the result of a first interpretation by Seulgi Lee in her sketches; these are then interpreted by the woodworker in a second phase. These new sculptural versions of the Bagatelle game result from an operation of translation that is dear to the artist: "I try to work on language systems by using craft. I attempt to offer craftspeople something that they already know how to make, an object that looks simple, but that can slightly surpass their usual practice". 

 

– Marjolaine Lévy