Civitas Solis II

Having adopted mirrors as a medium to create illusions in her Infinity series of the late 2000s, Lee Bul used fragmented mirrors extensively in her Civitas Solis series (2013~), further complicating the relationship between her artwork, the viewer, and the exhibition space. Civitas Solis is a series inspired by Italian theologian and philosopher Tommaso Campanella’s 1602 book of the same name, translated as The City of the Sun. Considered an important early utopian fiction, Campanella’s book describes a transparent society in a city enclosed by seven circular walls. Ironically, for Lee Bul, Campanella’s utopia gave rise to the idea of a society under complete control — a reminder of the impossibility of utopia. Deliberately constructed of fragments of mirrors, her Civitas Solis installations transform the exhibition space into an unsettling labyrinth of reflections and refractions that is both fantastic and sentimental. From this series, on view are Civitas Solis III (2015), a fractured mirror on the wall into which you can look, and Civitas Solis II (2014), a floating landscape of mirrors through which you can walk. For this exhibition at Manege, Civitas Solis II is half the size of the original.