Lee Ufan

My work is simple, it consists in just putting in relation an industrial iron plate and a natural stone. This term of the relation is supposed to stimulate a silent and meditative place.
The motive of my work is border and ambivalence, visible and invisible, silence and dialogue. It deals also with the correspondence between made and unmade.
 

Exhibition

• Silence
• Interconnection

Work/Series

• The Art of Margins
• Relatum - Meditation, 2006
• go and stop

Lee Ufan uses the term “Relatum” to refer to his sculptural works. They usually entail the juxtaposition of steel and stone, two diametrically opposed materials in terms of properties and origins. While the steel plates are industrially manufactured and standardized, in other words, abstracted, the natural stones are untouched and indeterminate. Lee takes these elements out of their original context in order to place them in a specific place and in a direct relationship to one another, to the space and to the viewer. He thus succeeds in creating an extraordinary experiential space, which points beyond what is consciously seen – a space of silence and meditation. The impression of lightness in these installations belies the enormous exertion expended to put the weighty stones and plates together. In their new context, the materials develop a specific kind of tension. While the steel plates convey above all a sense of finely calibrated balance, the stones take on a transcendental quality. In the installation Relatum – go and stop , the dominant impression is that of the liveliness of the stones, which are in part halted in their movements by interposed steel plates. In Relatum – Meditation by contrast, the stone seems to repose peacefully, in the shadow of a screen-like steel composition.

"I discovered natural stones as things from the outside world that are not fabricated or given a transparent meaning and bought them into the realm of artistic expression. i did not choose stones for their purity but because i felt that they strongly suggested unlimited externality. In other words, I turned to stones because of their otherness and their connection to the outside world, which is not identical with the self"

Lee Ufan - The Art of Margins

Lee Ufan show at the Galerie m 2006
Exhibition at Galerie m 2015