Within spaces designed by the artist, this exhibition by Lee Ufan distils over six decades of considered experimentation into a series of recent paintings and sculptures created especially for the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Lee’s sparing use of simple materials, including stone, steel and canvas, has a quiet force that encourages contemplation and consideration of the physical and intellectual self in relation to the work. Lee is also a writer whose philosophical approach to art embraces Zen Buddhism and Confucianism, alongside the ideas of classical and modern European philosophers.
Lee values the power of emptiness to generate both harmony and tension between objects and people. For him, the space around objects is as significant as the objects themselves. His conceptual and minimalist approach has been influential in art, design and philosophy, with artists Anish Kapoor and Park Seo-Bo as well as architect Tadao Ando among the prominent figures inspired by his art.
Born in Korea in 1936, Lee lives between Japan and France. He studied painting in Seoul before relocating to Tokyo to study philosophy. In the 1960s he was a founder of Japan’s Mono-ha (School of Things) movement, which emphasised relationships between natural and industrial materials, and between objects and their viewers. He was also associated with the Dansaekhwa monochrome movement that emerged in Korea in the 1950s as part of a search for a universal aesthetic that was separate from tradition and without nationalist associations.
It's been almost 50 years since Lee’s work was presented at the Art Gallery in the 1976 Biennale of Sydney. His first Sydney solo exhibition follows recent exhibitions of his work at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin, National Art Center in Tokyo, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Gwangju Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
