L'art de La vie — La Radrabie

L’art de La vie — La Radrabie

A place where one artist’s imagination is reborn into reality every single day. Art suspended between imagination and reality, found in a cultural space nestled dreamlike at the foot of a mountain at the edge of a village.

Words Hur Taewoo
Photos Choi Namyong
In collaboration with La Radrabie Art & Resort

It’s 2 p.m. A handful of guests sit at ease in the café of La Radrabie Art & Resort, gazing out the window. The late-summer sunlight slips through gaps between the buildings and tree branches, scattering as it reflects. A group that had been listening intently to explanations of the works in the gallery has just left. Not flashy, yet somehow flashy; not humble, yet somehow humble; seemingly old, yet not actually old — the atmosphere of this space can’t help but resemble artist Lee Sangil himself. A private villa, a gallery, a café, a restaurant, a multiplex, a studio, and a garden with a pavilion. Though the place opened only recently, the passage of time seems to have seeped into every corner. Lanky, with his coat and scarf trailing behind him like the flowing sleeves of a traditional robe, the artist strides in and settles into the café’s plush sofa as if about to lie down.

How long did it take you to conceive and build this place?
The construction itself took two years to finish. It was completed in 2015. The rest of the time was a period of aging — of letting things mature. And on top of that, the pandemic hit, so it matured even more. Even those stairs over there — I cut and shaped every one of them myself with a stone chisel and hammer, to give them a handmade feel. Hanok houses look old, don’t they? But this one wasn’t actually built long ago. I kept applying perilla oil to it over and over. Living in a hanok, I picked up bits and pieces from the grandmothers of old head families, learning and feeling things by doing them myself.

So that’s why you can feel the passage of time here.
I took care of it piece by piece. Take that deck over there — new wood like that has a brown tone. It’s a type of wood used for yachts, and if it’s that reddish-brown color, it stands out too much, so I sought out older, weathered pieces to make it look natural.

The architecture of La Radrabie Art & Resort feels effortlessly natural. Boulders were preserved in their original form, and waterways were left untouched. The villa uses eco-friendly materials such as red pine, red brick, gray stone, and oak. The three hanok buildings on the upper part of the resort grounds — Seogyeongru, Mokdanchae, and Sansuchae — face the mountain directly, and it’s said that the eaves were designed so their edges align with the ridge line of the mountain across the way. Nothing feels artificially out of place; the landscape and the space blend together naturally as a whole. Lee Sangil, an artist who has worked across fields as varied as hairstyling, floristry, spatial design, and fine art, led every step of the project from initial concept to completion.

You can imagine something, but putting it into practice must not have been easy.
When you work in a professional field for over 35 years, you naturally end up with some financial and material comfort — enough that you don’t have to worry about your later years. For people like us, there’s no age limit on retirement. In fact, the environment tends to bring more clients as time goes on. So I just went ahead and did it with confidence. I think what’s most natural and most confident is, in the end, what’s most beautiful.

This doesn’t seem like a space built purely with commercial interests in mind.
That’s true for me, at least. I could just live comfortably and stylishly, but there are things that don’t sit right with me if I only do that. I’ve received so much help from society, and I think simply enjoying that without giving anything back is just indulging yourself to the very end. That’s why I laid all of this out across the mountainside. Honestly, cultural projects shouldn’t be done for profit. You should do it because it’s fulfilling, and if you think of the younger generations coming after you, there’s nothing more worthwhile you could do.

So you wanted to turn your own imagination into reality?
It’s just my nature. My taste. Honestly, I don’t really have close friends. I only have my own world, and my philosophy is so strong that people don’t really approach me easily. I’m clearly not someone easy to get close to, right? Even now, sitting here talking with you, a corner of my mind is always thinking about something else. I can be deeply focused on a conversation and then suddenly seem to disappear, as if I were somewhere else entirely. Present, then gone. Gone, then present again. So realistically speaking, I’m an exhausting person to be around.

I imagine you’ve heard that kind of thing said about you for a long time.
That’s right. I’ve always hated fixed frameworks — the kind of things laid out like a textbook. But the things you come to feel through your own life experience are often far superior to what’s written in any textbook. So I rejected that. Thinking back to second grade, my teacher told us to draw the sky blue, but I hated that particular shade of blue. I should have just followed along like all the other kids, doing exactly what I was told, but I always had to talk back.

The gallery can be considered the very identity of La Radrabie. The exhibition space, composed of Lee Sangil’s distinctive pencil drawings and installation works, draws viewers in through stories unfolding from his personal life. The artist himself acts as docent, explaining the pieces, and visitors are above all overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the works. On canvases that reproduce and reinterpret everyday memories, traces of arduous labor drawn with fingertip precision, the whole body poured into every stroke, pile up thick and dense. A single line, layered countless times over, splits black from white and brings people to life. Every dawn, like a spiritual seeker, Lee Sangil sits on a cushion and picks up his pencil.

What led you into the world of drawing?
While my wife was studying in France, I felt unbearably lonely and isolated. She went abroad to study for the sake of our future, while I had to stay behind in reality. There was tuition to pay, and the kids’ education costs, and I had to keep running the shop, so I kept working. And amid all that, life became so tedious. So lonely. Then one day, I suddenly noticed an eye pencil on my wife’s dressing table. The moment I picked it up, something in my chest started burning again. Fiercely. I had loved drawing so much ever since I was young, and that passion, which I had bottled up and locked away inside me, finally burst out.

But why this particular kind of drawing? There are so many other genres out there...
I’ve tried them all. I’ve done all of them, but pencil just fits me perfectly. All this time, I’ve been caring for people’s hair, right? In the same way, immersing myself in a drawing with just this one pencil felt wonderful. And pencil is essentially a mineral — graphite. Because it’s natural, I love it even more.

How many years did it take to complete the works hanging here at La Radrabie?
More than twenty years. And there are still about a hundred pieces I haven’t framed yet. Some are even still in progress. Whenever I have time, I draw the way I eat meals or breathe — it’s just part of me. But ever since this place opened, my concentration has dropped a little. There are just too many other things demanding my attention... I’m happiest when I only have my own world. Left alone, I keep renewing myself endlessly.

On the studio floor lies a drawing that looks larger than even a 300-ho canvas. The heaps of stubby, worn-down pencils stand like small witnesses testifying to all that effort. When the scroll-like drawing is unrolled, another world appears — people, cities, mountains, forests, or hybridized landscapes and ruins from across the globe. Scenes born from imagination and rendered through the fingertips wait for the moment they will finally be exhibited to the world.

Of all the places you’ve traveled, which left the deepest impression on you?
Nepal. Trekking there changed my entire outlook on life. It was the first night of the Annapurna trek. Our beds were all set up at the lodge, and I stepped outside for a moment to smoke a cigarette, when I saw the sky glittering with stars and the Annapurna peaks glowing golden. The sun was setting in the west, and its light was draped across the peaks. The moment I saw that, tears just started streaming down my face. Looking back, I think the reason nature seeped so deeply into me was that I had been so consumed by the struggle for survival in a city like Seoul. Watching countless stars pour down from the sky, I cried and sobbed like someone repenting in a religious moment, thinking, ‘I really don’t need to just keep running forward anymore — I should live life and actually enjoy it.’ After that, I started traveling a lot.

I imagine travel gave you a lot of inspiration.
Throughout our lives, my wife and I always made sure to travel four times a year. Twice to places of the most extravagant luxury imaginable, places we could hardly believe we belonged in, and twice to remote, harsh places where our very lives could be at risk. Crossing those emotions from such different kinds of travel is what brings something new out of me and broadens my perspective. There were times I even went into debt to experience the kind of resort that only the world’s wealthiest people visit. As I mentioned earlier, nothing is as precious as what you gain through direct experience. New concepts and forms emerge through travel. Everything in this place was inspired by my travels.

Imagining things itself seems to bring you a lot of joy.
I just plunge straight into the world of imagination, and the picture is already fully drawn there in my mind. I’ve never abandoned my own dreams, and that’s why I’m still dreaming, even now.