Lot 1672: BAE ZOO

BAE ZOO
(B. 1980)
Pistol Guy
signed, titled, inscribed and dated 'Bae Zoo; Pistol Guy; oil on canvas; 116.7 x 72.7 cm; 2005' in English (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
117 x 72 cm. (46 x 28 3/8 in.)
Painted in 2005

Bred under his name Bae Zoo, the endearing and nostalgic characters of Lego figurines are 'toys of the zoo', a fitting conduit for Bae's alter ego and silent humor in rebelling against the conventional society. Exploiting Lego's unchanging facial expression and their mischievous demeanor, Bae interweaves the concepts of Georges Batille and kitsch aesthetics to subtly comment on the corollaries between human behavior and that of caged animals in a zoo.

Flawless in composition, aura and technique, all painterly aspects are mutually harmonized with sleek surface and infantile colors; the visual and conceptual contrast is unnoticed and fogged by the sweet smiling face and the untainted synthetic colors of orange, yellow and blue. However, the bare cement grey of the background prompts a cool distance from the viewer, grounding us in reality from contra the friendly first impression. Perhaps too sugary, too sentimental and benign, it will become suspicious of its sincerity, reminiscent of Batille's theory on human nature and its binary essences of innocence and adulteration; good and evil; attractive and ugly surfaces the canvas with our discovery of the subtle phallus of the Lego construction man. Concealed under the vivid colors of his lemon-yellow helmet and juicy orange top, Bae cunningly blushes a phallic form in the same red tone of the belt to veil a pictorial sadism, premeditated to fabricate a powerfully insinuative voyeurism with a witty insertion of the title Pistol Guy (Lot 1672). The sexual deviation and cruel violence arises in Bae's charmingly evil control in balancing Herman Broch's verdict on kitsch as 'the evil within the value-system of art', fixing a fun yet bizarre anxiety to the conservative subject of sexuality to deliberately offend the viewer by exposing the taboo, animalistic condition of human nature that we are forced to withhold and deny.