From Line

Lee Ufan's series, From Line, is among the most celebrated body of works in his oeuvre. These enigmatic works are created by the artist dragging a brush through blue paint suspended in viscous glue until the color fades away. Though linear uniformity draws attention to the painting's actual space, as the hazy pigment gently fades away the artist invites viewers to consider what comes after the end of the canvas as well. Ufan sees the pigment gradually becoming liberated from himself, fully exhaling space, and thus celebrating the reductive ideals of his philosophical home, the Japanese school of painting know as Mono-ha (School of Things). Mono-ha's philosophical subscribers celebrate what the earth has given, rather than participating in the futility of new creation. Reflecting Mono-ha's touches to earth, and harkening back to one of the movement's seminal works, Nobuo Sekine's Phase-Mother Earth, is Ufan's use of blue. Blue is most intimate with earth and virtue in Ufan's native Korean tradition, emanating hope, life, integrity and spirit.It is the thoughts derived from viewing the work which Ufan plans to emphasize, as the artist noted, "the ideal for a work of art is to be a 'place of nothingness'" (L. Ufan, The Art of Encounter, exh. cat., Lisson Gallery, London, 2004, n.p.).