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拍品专文
“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it’s caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.” – Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Lee Ufan’s work evolves around two major concepts of 'encounter' and 'body'. His central concept of ‘encounter,’ is thoroughly articulated in his famous 1970 essay, “In Search of Encounter.” He also stressed the importance of the ‘body’ or ‘bodilyness,’ the interconnection between the body, the mind and the world. Deeply versed in modern Western philosophy, in particular the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Lee formed his own theory that art should aim to encounter what he variously calls “the other,” or “the world.” He combined Western thought with the metaphysics of Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro, who suggested a new system of thought based on Zen Buddhism. Through his series of sculptures and paintings, Lee visualized his core concept of encounter, in other words, relationship with others, and the body as a significant medium for the encounter, a direct experience between matter and existence.
Dialogue is from his Dialogue series, which evolved in 2006 out of his previous Correspondence series, emerging as a complete embrace of the Korean Dansaekhwa movement which began in 1970s. Challenging the uncritical acceptance of Western Modernism during that time, Dansaekhwa artists looked beyond the last forty years of formalism for a distinct form of abstraction that focused on the spirituality of colour and the performance of painting. Characteristic of this series, Dialogue is painted on a white background using a monochrome colour. With a wide-tipped brush and a refined gradation of thick pigment, Lee would layer his strokes three or four times over a period of days, applying a new layer of paint onto a halfwet layer. The laborious and highly specific process often takes the artist one month of repetitive action to complete a new work. This highly choreographed and deliberate movement of the brush echoes the practice of Chinese ink painting—great masters were said to have controlled and concentrated on every movement of the body, including their breathing, to compose their works. His works are imbued with a certain depth and vitality whose roots trace back to Lee’s early literati training in classical Chinese art.
Indeed, Lee Ufan was educated as a child in traditional East Asian philosophy with emphasis on calligraphy, poetry, and literati painting. He developed a serious interest in the arts at Seoul National University and realized that a solid philosophical training was essential for him to become an international artist. During the mid-1960s he established himself as a key theorist and artist of the Monoha movement, material-based art movement of Japan in the 1960s and an influential figure of the Dansaekhwa movement, in particular embodied by his Dialogue series.
His compositions communicate a hope for simplicity, peace, and understanding that stems from the artist’s personal trauma and philosophical beliefs. It is in this simplicity of form, material, and action that Lee Ufan’s works expand the artistic dialogue of contemporary art, his process much resembling that of Richard Lin. With a new fusion of identity and experiences, Lee Ufan’s painting demonstrates a possibility for a solely distinct Asian contemporary artistic language that declares itself independent from and entirely equal to the Western model.
“When I make a brush mark on the canvas, I hold my breath, I concentrate and I pray that my hand, the brush and the canvas will be in harmony.” – Lee Ufan
Lee’s work is not an abstract painting but a form of calligraphy. Alternatively, one can see it as an entirely new abstract representation of spirit and material unified into one. In this way, Lee successfully opens a new possibility of painting by distinguishing his work from Western geometric abstract paintings that primarily focus on form alone. Lee’s art is the medium or passage which connects the poles between the artificial and nature, myself and others, making and unmaking, and made and unmade. His Dialogue series offers an approach to space characteristic of Buddhist philosophy: “Buddhism teaches that being is possible only because there is also nothingness, and appearance coexists with disappearance.” Here, the painted and unpainted both hold an equally important place in our interpretation of the painting as well as our interpretation of our body in relation to the painted and unpainted space. It is a completely new approach to art, breaking the modernist definition of creation and the boundary of modern painting and sculpture.
Lee Ufan is one of the most sought after Korean artists in the international art world. He has held a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, one of the few Asian artists, along with Paik Nam-June, Cai Guo-Qiang, On Kawara and Wang Jianwei. Lee's works have also exhibited at the Palace of Versailles, leading the path to Japanese master Hiroshi Sugimoto. He currently holds a major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.
Lee Ufan’s work evolves around two major concepts of 'encounter' and 'body'. His central concept of ‘encounter,’ is thoroughly articulated in his famous 1970 essay, “In Search of Encounter.” He also stressed the importance of the ‘body’ or ‘bodilyness,’ the interconnection between the body, the mind and the world. Deeply versed in modern Western philosophy, in particular the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Lee formed his own theory that art should aim to encounter what he variously calls “the other,” or “the world.” He combined Western thought with the metaphysics of Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro, who suggested a new system of thought based on Zen Buddhism. Through his series of sculptures and paintings, Lee visualized his core concept of encounter, in other words, relationship with others, and the body as a significant medium for the encounter, a direct experience between matter and existence.
Dialogue is from his Dialogue series, which evolved in 2006 out of his previous Correspondence series, emerging as a complete embrace of the Korean Dansaekhwa movement which began in 1970s. Challenging the uncritical acceptance of Western Modernism during that time, Dansaekhwa artists looked beyond the last forty years of formalism for a distinct form of abstraction that focused on the spirituality of colour and the performance of painting. Characteristic of this series, Dialogue is painted on a white background using a monochrome colour. With a wide-tipped brush and a refined gradation of thick pigment, Lee would layer his strokes three or four times over a period of days, applying a new layer of paint onto a halfwet layer. The laborious and highly specific process often takes the artist one month of repetitive action to complete a new work. This highly choreographed and deliberate movement of the brush echoes the practice of Chinese ink painting—great masters were said to have controlled and concentrated on every movement of the body, including their breathing, to compose their works. His works are imbued with a certain depth and vitality whose roots trace back to Lee’s early literati training in classical Chinese art.
Indeed, Lee Ufan was educated as a child in traditional East Asian philosophy with emphasis on calligraphy, poetry, and literati painting. He developed a serious interest in the arts at Seoul National University and realized that a solid philosophical training was essential for him to become an international artist. During the mid-1960s he established himself as a key theorist and artist of the Monoha movement, material-based art movement of Japan in the 1960s and an influential figure of the Dansaekhwa movement, in particular embodied by his Dialogue series.
His compositions communicate a hope for simplicity, peace, and understanding that stems from the artist’s personal trauma and philosophical beliefs. It is in this simplicity of form, material, and action that Lee Ufan’s works expand the artistic dialogue of contemporary art, his process much resembling that of Richard Lin. With a new fusion of identity and experiences, Lee Ufan’s painting demonstrates a possibility for a solely distinct Asian contemporary artistic language that declares itself independent from and entirely equal to the Western model.
“When I make a brush mark on the canvas, I hold my breath, I concentrate and I pray that my hand, the brush and the canvas will be in harmony.” – Lee Ufan
Lee’s work is not an abstract painting but a form of calligraphy. Alternatively, one can see it as an entirely new abstract representation of spirit and material unified into one. In this way, Lee successfully opens a new possibility of painting by distinguishing his work from Western geometric abstract paintings that primarily focus on form alone. Lee’s art is the medium or passage which connects the poles between the artificial and nature, myself and others, making and unmaking, and made and unmade. His Dialogue series offers an approach to space characteristic of Buddhist philosophy: “Buddhism teaches that being is possible only because there is also nothingness, and appearance coexists with disappearance.” Here, the painted and unpainted both hold an equally important place in our interpretation of the painting as well as our interpretation of our body in relation to the painted and unpainted space. It is a completely new approach to art, breaking the modernist definition of creation and the boundary of modern painting and sculpture.
Lee Ufan is one of the most sought after Korean artists in the international art world. He has held a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, one of the few Asian artists, along with Paik Nam-June, Cai Guo-Qiang, On Kawara and Wang Jianwei. Lee's works have also exhibited at the Palace of Versailles, leading the path to Japanese master Hiroshi Sugimoto. He currently holds a major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.