5 Must-See Gallery Shows
By: Scott Indrisek
Lee Bul at Lehmann Maupin (Chrystie Street), through June 21
This South Korean artist’s exhibition is worth a trip if only to gauge your own opinion regarding interactivity and spectacle in contemporary practice. There are metal-and-mixed-media sculptures — a sprawling tree form on the floor, an abstract mass on the wall, another piece hanging like a chandelier from the ceiling — but the centerpiece is “Via Negativa II,” 2012, which fills the downstairs gallery at the Chrystie Street location. The floor is covered in mirrored tile, requiring visitors to put protective booties over their shoes before entering a structure that the artist has built: A funhouse-style hut of mirrors and lights that forces you into its illuminated heart, and then makes it more than a little difficult to find your way back out again. What do you do in such a situation? Well, you take a few obnoxiously experimental Instagram selfies, of course. And commenting on one of my own obnoxious selfies, a Scandinavian gallerist I know chimed in: “At first it was cheesy but none the less intriguing, and very beautiful once inside. And impressive that someone would build such an amazing maze around a Yayoi Kusama or Ivan Navarro work. The Kusama [Infinity Mirrored] rooms don’t need it, but Navarro should be thankful that someone has taken him to the next level.”