Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan is a painter, sculptor, writer, and philosopher who is widely recognized for his unconventional artistic processes which emphasize the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the spaces that they inhabit. He rose to prominence in the late 1960s as a leading practical and theoretical proponent of the avant-garde Mono-ha (Object School) with Nobuo Sekine, Takamatsu Jirō, and Kishio Suga. Being part of the first Japanese contemporary art movement to gain international recognition, Mono-ha utilized raw physical materials that had been minimally manipulated, which was representative of rejecting Western ideas, and emphasized the relationships between materials and perceptions rather than expression or intervention. In 1991, Lee began his Correspondance paintings, consisting of works that featured one or two grey-blue brushstrokes made of oil and crushed stone pigment applied to a large white surface. His equally minimal sculpture series, Relatum, consisted of one or more light-colored round stones and dark, rectangular iron plates. The dialectical relationship between the brushstroke and canvas is echoed in the relationship between the stone and iron plate. In Lee's installations, the core of his practice is occupied space and empty space, which is seen through untouched and engaged elements, representing the doing, non-doing, and the connection between the painted and the unpainted.