Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan (b. 1936) is a South Korean artist whose practice has redefined material, space, and the perception of postwar art. As a central figure and leading theorist of the Japanese avant-garde *Mono-ha* (“School of Things”) movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lee helped move art away from representation and closer to direct encounters with materials and their spatial relationships. *Mono-ha* artists emphasized raw, unaltered materials — stones, wood, metal, glass — arranged in simple juxtapositions to reveal their inherent qualities and activate the surrounding space.

Alongside this, Lee has maintained a connection to *Dansaekhwa*, the Korean monochrome painting movement of the 1970s. In his painterly practice, Lee uses minimal brushstrokes, often singular, on large, meticulously prepared surfaces to explore breathing, time, emptiness, and presence. These gestures create a serene dialogue between the mark and the perception of emptiness, inviting slow, silent contemplation.

The concept of *Relatum* — a term he adopted in the early 1970s to emphasize the dialogue between elements rather than the autonomous object — is central to Lee’s sculptural work. In *Relatum* works, large natural stones, which Lee understands as condensed time, are paired with industrial materials such as steel plates or glass. Through these combinations, the viewer becomes aware of space, gravity, and the tension between matter, nature, artificial objects, and space.

The idea of *dialogue* conveyed by Lee is present in both his painting and his sculpture: brushstroke and ground, stone and steel, object and viewer are never isolated; they enter into a mutual dialogue that highlights the space between them. These practices embody his long-standing interest in the interior/exterior relationship — the way forms communicate with the environment, how presence is deeply linked to absence, and how meaning emerges through encounter, exchange, and dialogue.

In the context of his first major exhibition in Portugal, at the House and Park of Serralves, Lee’s aesthetic experiments come into special focus. Here, the dialogues the artist has sustained over six decades of practice unfold between built architecture and landscape. The presentation includes three outdoor sculptures installed in the park, framing direct encounters between stone, steel, and environment; six paintings, including one *site-specific* work, whose meditative force contrasts with the architectural structure; and three sculptures installed inside the house, each configured to reveal the tension between materials and their contexts.

By situating Lee Ufan’s work within the ordered interiors of the house and the natural expanses of the park, the exhibition stages the artist’s rigorous investigation of the interaction between interior/exterior, object, and landscape, as well as the perceptive encounter that Lee has long articulated — affirming art as a continuous and active dialogue with the world.