#LEE UFAN: PAINTING SCULPTURES

[elch-im-ausland]

Tuesday Feb. 20 2024

Got up around 9:30 am and took a shower. The bathroom at my host's apartment is so cute, there are big plants in there and a little pink lamp above the mirror and Simpsons figurines on the shelves and 2 very cool posters. My only gripe is that the shower head doesn't attach to the wall so I have to wash my hair upside down which is a good thing if you are worried about your hairline and your big forehead because my grandma told me that always wearing your hair back and washing your hair normally can make your hair line recede and also washing it upside down can give your hair more volume. But it also makes my back hurt so idk.

Anyway and then I had my leftover wontons for breakfast and I made coffee which I'm not very good at but I'm starting to drink it more. And then we reshot my host's video project and experimented with the lighting and it turned out great! She had to go buy a dvd player and convert the movie to a dvd format so I went to the Hamburger Bahnhof which was actually renovated into an art gallery.

I got to the gallery and immediately knew I wasn't going to have a good time because the coat check lady was mean and then I started to get frustrated by the layout of the gallery and the map is NOT clear at all about entrances and such so I was not a happy camper.

The first exhibit was a retrospective for Lee Ufan. He is a minimalist artist who also led the Mono-ha art movement and he mostly worked with big stones, sheets of metal, glass as well as painting on canvas. I especially liked his repetitions of patterns and also the fluorescent geometric spray paintings at the start of the exhibit and the gradient paintings at the end. What I liked best about his sculptures was how big they were, especially the pane of glass shattered by a rock.

The next exhibit was art that was inspired by Berlin. It was multi-media, with sculptures and paintings and photographs and readymades and videos, so it's a bit hard to describe the whole exhibit without describing every piece. I will say I was getting more and more frustrated by the fact that the info signs were difficult to locate for some artworks because of where they were placed and also because they blended in with the partitions. Maybe I will leave a Yelp review. But some of my favorite pieces were: Car frames by Selma Selman, a text-video piece of a woman being interrogated by police about the murder of her husband with techno music in the background (I can't remember the artist's name), Mountain of cocaine, and this metal structure (with a palm leaf hanging off of it) on top of a sheet of gold paper with a green vase and behind it is a half covered Greek pottery painting.

Finally I went to Nadia Kaabi-Linke's Seeing Without Light exhibition. There was supposed to be an audio element to it but the museum headphones didn't work on one side (the penultimate straw that would break the camel's back so to speak... I was getting close to having to leave early atp) so I skipped that part and went in. The first section has tactile paintings that guests are allowed to touch which was cool until I thought about the germs :( but the rest of the exhibition was interesting. A lot of the exhibition was relating to Kaabi-Linke's personal identity as Ukranian and Tunisian, as well as to the fact that Hamburger Bahnhof was used during WW2 to transport people to concentration camps. I liked the series of ink prints of Kaabi-Linke's hair that was about 20 pages long, as well as the scales that held sand on one side and salt on the other. Initially they were each balanced but the salt absorbs moisture so it became heavier over time, and also the video project Bud'mo, which was filmed in Ukraine, of these trees being filmed from the ground up and they sway in the wind and you can walk on top the of the projected video through a tunnel. Very cool.

Anyway my feet started to hurt so I decided to leave. I was going to go to the Wall Museum but the google reviews didn't seem promising so I decided to look for some black pants since I don't have any after the garage sale I had in August. Plus it's Berlin so surely they will have interesting clothes? (Dear Reader, they do have cool clothes, just not if you are kind of fat and above average height. I did go fuck myself thanks for asking. le sigh)

The first store I went to was VEB Orange. It's more of an antique store and not very much clothing but a lot of the stuff was from the DDR so I stuck around and I was not disappointed. Lots of little knick knacks and records, tapes, strips of film, pins, jewelry, decor, telephones, fiber arts supplies and sewing patterns, as well as a sweet little kitty napping on a pile of blankets. But my favorite part was the kitchen room. The cupbords and counters were solid orange and all of the VERY vintage kitchen tools were organized by color, and of course most of the stuff was orange. In the end I bought a little pack of buttons for 6 euro. I also went to another thrift store and although it was all clothing it was more like name-brand stuff like Levi's and Adidas and i can get that shit in the US so I went home. On the way home I bought some beers and chocolate because Ritter Sport is soooo cheap here. Fuck Mak's mini mart fr

I answered some emails and was able to download a game I used to play in middle school that got deleted off the Scholastic website when they did their accursed update and then I called my mother about my flight home and then I had my Tom Kha Gai soup with buttered bread and my beers and then I went to bed!

[elanorfmp]

Busan

The museum's permanent collection includes more than 4,000 artworks, with a focus on contemporary Korean art from the 20th and 21st centuries. The collection includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, and other multimedia artworks by prominent Korean artists such as Lee Ufan, Park Seo-bo, and Kim Hong-do.

In addition to its permanent collection, the Busan Museum of Art also hosts a variety of temporary exhibitions throughout the year, featuring works by both Korean and international artists. This exhibit was the zombie exhibit, which was only for a temporary amount of time.

[lvdbbooks]

LEE UFAN: PAINTING, SCULPTURES

2021年2月23日

【新入荷・新本】

Lee Ufan LEE UFAN: PAINTING, SCULPTURES, Fondazione Mudima, 2007

Hardcover. 176 pages. 230 x 270 mm. Color.

価格：3,500円（＋税）

/

韓国人アーティスト、リー・ウーファン（李禹煥 / Lee Ufan）の作品集。1969年から2007年までの絵画と彫刻を収録する一冊。第52回ヴェネツィア・ビエンナーレへの出展に伴い刊行された。出展当時までの業績を1冊にまとめたモノグラフ。 Published by Fondazione Mudima on the occasion of the exhibition by Lee Ufan, from 6 June to 21 November 2007, 52. International Art Exhibition, Collateral Events, Palazzo Palumbo Fossati, Venice. Exhibition organized by the Mudima Foundation.

（twelvebooksによる本書紹介文）

[scarecrowbox]

Lee Ufan, Relatum Dwelling (B), 2017

[paintedout]

Lee Ufan

[kithtaehyung]

⬛️ WEBSITE MOCKUPS : RKIVE.ORG ⬛️

“When we went abroad, we stayed in our hotel rooms except when we were working. The only places I could go then were museums. The art galleries full of Monets or Van Goghs were always crowded, but when I visited one weekday morning and had them mostly to myself, I had a eureka moment—an artist who’d passed away 100 years ago was communicating directly with a boy from Korea. I was so envious. From then on, I began seeking out and learning about Korean painters.” — HAPPY NAMJOON DAY! ; 940912 ; CLICK FOR HQ. twt | ig 

Note: rkive and gallery walk gifs may take a bit to load, and look best on desktop. Note 2: To learn more about all of the artwork and artists showcased, click below. 

When The Year 2000 Comes (2019), by YANG HAEGUE, the avant-garde of Korean art.  “She is an accomplished and international artist. She notably represented Korea at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and participated to the prestigious dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012. In her works, which flirt with conceptual art, she explores myths and stories, that touch on the universal. She appropriates them through sculptures, installations, performances, and video.”  

From Point (1976), by LEE UFAN, Korean Zen Art. “He is a Korean artist known worldwide for his paintings depicting the mark of a brush whose color fades… Yet his practice goes far beyond that! He creates performances, sculptures and installations, which always question a certain “state of being.” He is influenced by Zen and Asian philosophy, but has also drawn heavily on Western thought. Among his favorite subjects: observing the intimate, conflicting or poetic relationship between natural and artificial elements.” 

Brushstrokes-Diagram (2015), by SONG HYUN-SOOK, Korean and Western art.  “With her, each brushstroke tells a story, a journey. She weaves links between Korean art and Western art. On the one hand, it expresses that almost meditative state of concentration that exists in the art of calligraphy. On the other hand, she uses tempera, a typically European oil painting technique, to create patterns that immerse the viewer in reality and the present moment.” 

Drawing, Charcoal on paper, 65 x 50 cm (2014) and Issu de feu Charcoal on canvas, 100 x 81 cm, (2000), by LEE BAE, the Soulages of Korean Art. “A Korean abstract artist. Like Soulages, for whom black is a color, he explores the almost infinite possibilities of black. He sinks into the abyss of darkness. Until recently, he mainly used charred materials to paint his canvases. In doing so, he offered a powerful metaphor for the cycle of life.” 

Écriture No.160523 (2016), by PARK SEO-BO, Korean abstraction. “One of the best known Korean artists. He is emblematic of the monochrome Dansaekhwa movement. A current that synthesizes the traditional Korean spirit and Western abstraction. In a way, he is very close to minimalist artists, choosing neutral tones to highlight components and fabrics.” 

Mat 61 × 81 #19-17 (2019), by SUKI SEOKYEONG KANG, contemporary art.  “Born in 1977, this Korean artist is one of the biggest names of the art market. Her work is mostly inspired by her own philosophical research and reflection on space and our place in it. She uses sculpture, installation, and performance to explore these ideas. Her works were presented, among others, in the Venice and Shanghai Biennales.” 

Untitled (1966), by CHOI WOOK-KYUNG, the outcast.  “Wook-kyung Choi (1940-1985) is an outcast in the history of contemporary Korean art. She is an abstract painter. But most Korean abstract painters shine in Dansaekhwa: the Korean monochrome. She, on the contrary, is mainly influenced by expressionism. Brutally, instinctively, aggressively, she throws the colors on the canvas. She seeks to immerse herself in the moment, and to create true, pure, expressive forms. Thus, it plays a capital role for the diversity of Korean abstract art.”

Thank you for your interest in these artists and this passion project! All of the website information (other than the artist bio on the Artist Spotlight page) is fictional. Happy Joonie Day 2022, and let’s continue to support him and all the fantastic Korean artists out there. 

SRC: one, two, three

[woojailee]

Richard Serra

Equals, 2015

Snakes, 1997

My interest in minimalism, materiality, tactility and the use of space, seems to all exist in harmony in Richard Serra’s works. Firstly, his use of the material in its purest and untreated surface brings the tactility and qualities of the material to be experienced as it is. The beauty of the material is left to be experienced naturally. His use of the material to speak about the ideas around the industrial society we live in is also very interesting. My pursuit to use the qualities of the material to tell stories and ideas seemed to be done perfectly in Serra’s works. What is interesting in his work is not only the tactility of the material but also the scale in which his works exists in. The experience of the material is exaggerated with such scale and adds to the ideas of massive productions in the metal industry.

When we talk about Serra’s works, it is also not possible to talk about them without its interaction with the space. How his massive sculptures occupy and interact with the space is very fascinating. They do not occupy the whole space but exist together with the void spaces around and inside of the sculpture. It almost feels as if you are inside the paintings of Lee Ufan, where Serra’s sculptures are Lee’s brush strokes and the space is his canvas. The resonance of Serra’s sculptures within the space, experienced at the body scale of the audiences is the area in which I would also like to expand my practice.

Richard Serra also has interesting painting pieces which are also of simple strokes of simple geometry within the canvas. It was inspiring for me to see how his practise can expand from spaces of canvas to the whole gallery space with his sculptures. Even though his approaches of two works are different, his response to the space seems to exist and be delivered to the audience at different scales. I would like to also be able to use the space and create the experience in both 2D and 3D in different scales, together with the tactility of the material in which I am using.

[miamiartdistrict]

KAMROOZ ARAM

on the ancient arts of Iran

Achaemenid (Iran, Susa). Bricks with a palmette motif, ca. 6th–4th century B.C. Ceramic, glaze. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1948 (48.98.20a–c)

The Artist Project

Vito Acconci on Gerrit Rietveld's Zig Zag Stoel

Ann Agee on the Villeroy Harlequin Family

Diana Al-Hadid on the cubiculum from the villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale

Ghada Amer on an Iranian tile panel, Garden Gathering

Kamrooz Aram on the ancient arts of Iran

Cory Arcangel on the harpsichord

John Baldessari on Philip Guston's Stationary Figure

Barry X Ball on an Egyptian fragment of a queen’s face

Ali Banisadr on Hieronymus Bosch's The Adoration of the Magi

Dia Batal on a Syrian tile panel with calligraphic inscription

Zoe Beloff on Édouard Manet's Civil War (Guerre Civile)

Dawoud Bey on Roy DeCarava

Nayland Blake on boli

Barbara Bloom on Vilhelm Hammershøi's Moonlight, Strandgade 30

Andrea Bowers on Howardena Pindell

Mark Bradford on Clyfford Still

Cecily Brown on medieval sculptures of the Madonna and Child

Luis Camnitzer on Giovanni Battista Piranesi's etchings

Nick Cave on Kuba cloths

Alejandro Cesarco on Gallery 907

Enrique Chagoya on Goya's Los Caprichos

Roz Chast on Italian Renaissance painting

Willie Cole on Ci Wara sculpture

George Condo on Claude Monet's The Path through the Irises

Petah Coyne on a Japanese outer robe with Mount Hōrai

Njideka Akunyili CROSBY on Georges Seurat's Embroidery; The Artist's Mother

John Currin on Ludovico Carracci's The Lamentation

Moyra Davey on a rosary terminal bead with lovers and Death's head

Edmund de Waal on an ewer in the shape of a Tibetan monk's cap

Thomas Demand on the Gubbio studiolo

Jacob El Hanani on the Mishneh Torah, by Master of the Barbo Missal

Teresita Fernández on Precolumbian gold

Spencer Finch on William Michael Harnett's The Artist's Letter Rack

Eric Fischl on Max Beckmann's Beginning

Roland Flexner on Jacques de Gheyn II's Vanitas Still Life

Walton Ford on Jan van Eyck and workshop's The Last Judgment

Natalie Frank on Käthe Kollwitz

LaToya Ruby FRAZIER on Gordon Parks's Red Jackson

Suzan Frecon on Duccio di Buoninsegna's Madonna and Child

Adam Fuss on a marble grave stele of a little girl

Maureen Gallace on Paul Cézanne's still life paintings with apples

Jeffrey Gibson on Vanuatu slit gongs

Nan Goldin on Julia Margaret Cameron

Wenda Gu on Robert Motherwell's Lyric Suite

Ann Hamilton on a Bamana marionette

Jane Hammond on snapshots and vernacular photography

Zarina Hashmi on Arabic calligraphy

Sheila Hicks on The Organ of Mary, a prayer book by Ethiopian scribe Baselyos

Rashid Johnson on Robert Frank

Y.Z. Kami on Egyptian mummy portraits

Deborah Kass on Athenian vases

Nina Katchadourian on Early Netherlandish portraiture

Alex Katz on Franz Kline's Black, White, and Gray

Jeff Koons on Roman sculpture

An-My Lê on Eugène Atget's Cuisine

Il Lee on Rembrandt van Rijn's portraits

Lee Mingwei on Chinese ceremonial robes

Lee Ufan on the Moon Jar

Glenn Ligon on The Great Bieri

Lin Tianmiao on Alex Katz's Black and Brown Blouse

Kalup Linzy on Édouard Manet

Robert Longo on Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

Nicola López on works on paper

Nalini Malani on Hanuman Bearing the Mountaintop with Medicinal Herbs

Kerry James MARSHALL on Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's Odalisque in Grisaille

Josiah McElheny on Horace Pippin

Laura McPhee on Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Harvesters

Josephine Meckseper on George Tooker's Government Bureau

Julie Mehretu on Velázquez's Juan de Pareja

Alexander Melamid on Ernest Meissonier's 1807, Friedland

Mariko Mori on Botticelli's The Annunciation

Vik Muniz on The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art

Wangechi Mutu on Egon Schiele

James Nares on Chinese calligraphy

Catherine Opie on the Louis XIV bedroom

Cornelia Parker on Robert Capa's The Falling Soldier

Izhar Patkin on Shiva as Lord of Dance

Sheila Pepe on European armor

Raymond Pettibon on Joseph Mallord William Turner

Sopheap Pich on Vincent van Gogh's drawings

Robert Polidori on Jules Bastien-Lepage's Joan of Arc

Rona Pondick on Egyptian sculpture fragments

Liliana Porter on Jacometto's Portrait of a Young Man

Wilfredo Prieto on Auguste Rodin's sculptures

Rashid Rana on Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

Krishna Reddy on Henry Moore

Matthew Ritchie on The Triumph of Fame over Death

Dorothea Rockburne on an ancient Near Eastern head of a ruler

Alexis Rockman on Martin Johnson Heade's Hummingbird and Passionflowers

Annabeth Rosen on ceramic deer figurines

Martha Rosler on The Met Cloisters

Tom Sachs on the Shaker Retiring Room

David Salle on Marsden Hartley

Carolee Schneemann on Cycladic female figures

Dana Schutz on Balthus's The Mountain

Arlene Shechet on a bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer

James Siena on the Buddha of Medicine Bhaishajyaguru

Katrín Sigurdardóttir on the Hôtel de Cabris, Grasse

Shahzia Sikander on Persian miniature painting

Joan Snyder on Florine Stettheimer's Cathedrals paintings

Pat Steir on the Kongo Power Figure

Thomas Struth on Chinese Buddhist sculpture

Hiroshi Sugimoto on Bamboo in the Four Seasons, attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu

Eve Sussman on William Eggleston

Swoon on Honoré Daumier's The Third-Class Carriage

Sarah Sze on the Tomb of Perneb

Paul Tazewell on Anthony van Dyck's portraits

Wayne Thiebaud on Rosa Bonheur's The Horse Fair

Hank Willis THOMAS on a daguerreotype button

Mickalene Thomas on Seydou Keïta

Fred Tomaselli on Guru Dragpo

Jacques Villeglé on Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso

Mary Weatherford on Goya's Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga

William Wegman on Walker Evans's postcard collection

Kehinde Wiley on John Singer Sargent

Betty Woodman on a Minoan terracotta larnax

Xu Bing on Jean-François Millet's Haystacks: Autumn

Dustin Yellin on ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals

Lisa Yuskavage on Édouard Vuillard's The Green Interior

Zhang Xiaogang on El Greco's The Vision of Saint John

[partwildflower]

10 of London’s must-visit secret art galleries

Whether you’re looking for on-the-rise artists or the Western world’s most esteemed Old Masters, London’s art trail never disappoints. Its landmark museums and galleries are strangers to no-one – but swap a day at the Tate for a clutch of lesser-known galleries, to experience the city’s creative flair from a cutting-edge, and often far less crowded angle.

Pedro Reyes at the Lisson Gallery, 27 Bell Street, London. Image courtesy of Lisson Gallery/Pedro Reyes

Lisson Gallery

Since its opening in 1967, Lisson Gallery has brought celebrated artists to the forefront of London’s art scene, with Anish Kapoor, Lee Ufan, Ai Weiwei and Richard Deacon just some of the internationally-acclaimed names to have made their mark within its clean, all-white interiors. Perfectly placed between Edgware Road station and Regent’s Park, it’s a must-visit for anyone making their rounds of Marylebone’s upscale boutiques and landmark museums.

Address: 67 Lisson St, Marylebone, London NW1 5DA

Maureen Paley

Wander east of the capital’s hip-and-happening Shoreditch to find this small gem of a gallery, hidden away in a warehouse-style building so discreet and nondescript, that anyone searching for it would almost certainly walk right past its door. A moment’s walk from Bethnal Green station and garden, its red-brick façade conceals fascinating interiors, however, as it shows off the ground-breaking multimedia works of contemporary artists, including Turner prize winners Wolfgang Tillmans and Gillian Wearing.

Address: 21 Herald St, London E2 6JT

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Dulwich Picture Gallery/Adam Scott

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Founded in 1811, this quaint Dulwich hub is the world’s first purpose-built art gallery that houses more than 600 paintings to date. From the works of Rembrandt, Canaletto, Rubens and Fragonard across its permanent collection, to its fascinating themed exhibitions, talks and community-led learning programmes, it’s an institution within its local community and a landmark destination for fine art-lovers – yet retains its under-the-radar status, particularly by way of its location, tucked away near Dulwich Park in leafy southeast London.

Address: Gallery Rd, London SE21 7AD

Victoria Miro

Spread across a former furniture factory in Hoxton and a classic red-brick building behind Sotheby’s in Mayfair, Victoria Miro is perhaps best known amongst modern art fanatics for housing the playfully dotted sculptures of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Since its conception in the 1980s, it has also been graced by the works of Grayson Perry, Isaac Julien, Idris Khan, and more international names boasting varied portfolios of paintings, sculptures, photography and cinematic installations.

Address: 16 Wharf Rd, Hoxton, London N1 7RW

‘Leaving the Theatre’ by Carlo Carra (1910) at the Estorick Collection, London. Image courtesy of Estorick Collection

Estorick Collection

A London go-to for acquainting yourself with modern Italian art at its finest, the Estorick Collection opened in 1998 within the walls of a Grade II listed Georgian townhouse, to exhibit Futurist artwork alongside figurative art and sculptures from the late 1800s to the 1950s. Its carefully curated exhibitions are thoughtful and exemplary, with famous names such as Modigliani, Emilio Greco and Marcello Geppetti displaying the influence and power of Italian art and culture.

Address: 39A Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN

Hauser & Wirth

Though it has no fewer than nine venues across the world, set in everything from an impressive Gstaad chalet to a converted Somerset farm, Hauser & Wirth remains an independent gallery offering a refreshing take on contemporary art. Located in a sought-after central London location – the prestigious Savile Row – it presents the works of both emerging and established talent, with an impressive roster that includes Paul McCarthy, Fausto Melotti and Fabio Mauri. Expect spectacular diversity across the board – from the themes explored, to the mediums showcased, to the many origins and stories of its international artists.

Address: 23 Savile Row, Mayfair, London W1S 2ET

‘Loie Hollowell: Dominant / Recessive’ at Pace Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Pace Gallery/Damian Griffiths

Pace Gallery

Situated between Piccadilly Circus and Green Park tube stations, Pace Gallery enjoys a central location in a wing of the Royal Academy of Arts. Founded in Boston in 1960, you’ll find its venues across New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Palo Alto and Geneva – making it rather well-known amongst seasoned art followers, yet unknown enough for you to enjoy a relatively crowd-free day of art-viewing in the Big Smoke.

Address: 6 Burlington Gardens, Mayfair, London W1S 3ET

The Crypt Gallery

A goose bump-inducing site of historic wonder, the Crypt of St Pancras Paris Church has been used throughout its 200-year-old history as a burial site and air raid shelter, before its most recent transformation into a gallery space – leading the way for imaginative art venues in central London. Wander its vaulted underground pathways to explore its thought-provoking programme of 21st-century art exhibitions and immersive dance performances.

Address: Euston Rd, Kings Cross, London NW1 2BA

‘A Coin in Nine Hands – Part 1’ (2017) at Large Glass, London. Image courtesy of Large Glass

Large Glass Gallery

Open Wednesday to Saturday, this Caledonian Road hotspot offers a unique and innovative approach to its curation of contemporary art, with photography, sculpture and abstract paintings all featuring highly across its all-grey walls. Named after and inspired by the mind of Marcel Duchamp, it has housed the works of American visionary Sol LeWitt, Italian artist Guido Guidi and more, across a series of thoughtful thematic exhibitions since its opening in 2011.

Address: 392 Caledonian Rd, London N1 1DN

Banner Repeater

Housed along platform one of Hackney Downs railway station (yes, you read that correctly), Banner Repeater is an artist-run library and exhibition space set in the most unique of locations – a project which, funded by the Art in Empty Spaces government initiative, has helped introduce a rich cultural offering to the local community, as well as bring disused premises back to life. Just be mindful of its opening times when planning your visit: 8-11am Tuesday to Thursday, 11am-6pm on Friday, and 12-6pm on weekends.

Address: Hackney Downs Network Rail, Platform 1 Dalston Ln, London E8 1LA

Written for Secret Escapes’ blog, The Great Escape, published 18 September 2018.

[yousakana]

直島、李禹煥美術館 A journey to islands alive with art. Lee Ufan Museum A museum resulting from the collaboration between internationally acclaimed artist Lee Ufan, presently based mainly in Europe, and architect Tadao Ando. The Ando-designed Lee Ufan Museum A museum resulting from the collaboration between internationally acclaimed artist Lee Ufan, presently based mainly in Europe, and architect Tadao Ando. The Ando-designed semi-underground structure houses paintings and sculptures by Lee spanning a period from the 1970s to the present day. Lee's works resonate with Ando's architecture, giving visitors an impression of both stillness and dynamism. Located in a gentle valley surrounded by hills and the ocean, the museum offers a tranquil space where nature, architecture and art come in resonance with each other, inviting to peaceful and quiet contemplation, in a society overflowing with material goods. (李禹煥美術館) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQvoU3gsQam/?utm_medium=tumblr

[milenaolesinska]

Exposition Art Blog  Lee Ufan - Korean minimalist painter and sculptor

"Painter, sculptor, writer and philosopher Lee Ufan came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of the major theoretical and practical proponents of the avant-garde Mono-ha (Object School) group. The Mono-ha school of thought was Japan’s first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition. It rejected Western notions of representation, focusing on the relationships of materials and perceptions rather than on expression or intervention.The artists of Mono-ha present works made of raw physical materials that have barely been manipulated. In 1991 Lee Ufan began his series of Correspondance paintings, which consist of just one or two grey-blue brushstrokes, made of a mixture of oil and crushed stone pigment, applied onto a large white surface. His sculptural series Relatum is equally minimal: each work is comprised of one or more light-colored round stones and dark, rectangular iron plates. The dialectical relationship between brushstroke and canvas is mimicked in the relationship between stone and iron plate. In Ufan’s installations space is at the same time untouched and engaged, at the confines between doing and non-doing. The relationship between painted / unpainted and occupied / empty space lies at the heart of Lee Ufan’s practice. "

More

[creativinn]

At Royal Palace in Seoul, an Expansive Art Exhibition With an Ambitious Agenda

Deoksugung Palace in Seoul has lived many lives. A residence for members of the royal family during the Joseon dynasty, it became a refuge for King Seonjo in the late 1500s after a Japanese invasion laid waste to nearby palaces. At the start of the 20th century, Emperor Gojong added a Western-style residence, and the sylvan grounds became a park a few years later, when Japan occupied the country.

Now Deoksugung is hosting a tightly curated art exhibition that is one prong of an ambitious new initiative called Art Plant Asia that aims to boost international recognition of Asia’s art world, with Seoul as a vital hub within it.

Putting together a show at a carefully protected historical location amid a pandemic “was a very challenging experience, but also an interesting one,” said Jang Hyejung, whose co-curator on the endeavor was Yoon Juliat. For “Hare Way Object,” the two have installed work by more than 30 Korean artists—from modernist giants like Lee Ufan and Kim Whanki to key younger figures like Suki Seokyeong Kang and Haegue Yang—in wooden corridors once used as storage or living quarters for court servants, as well as various pavilions and a small pond on the property.

Sculptures by Suki Seokyeong Kang, at left; at right, paintings by Park Junghae.

A fantastical Lee Bul—one of her ineffable alien life forms—looks strangely at home as it hangs at the center of a structure in this traditional environment. Particularly given its title, Chiasma (2005), which is the point where chromosomal material is exchanged, one might take the piece as a kind of mascot for Art Plant Asia, which is a hybrid of a development project, a multifarious curatorial platform, and an educational forum.

Art Plant was created by Yoon Hoon Yul, a businessman who founded the Jeongdong 1928 Art Center, not far from the palace, working with the curator Lee Seunghyun, who is the director of the inaugural edition. (Support has come from the private sector and the Seoul government.) The organization, Jang said, has been motivated by the fact that, while East Asia accounts for 24 percent of worldwide GDP, its contemporary art is still not necessarily well known beyond its borders.

At local galleries over the past few weeks, Art Plant has staged lectures with arts leaders and screened video interviews with dealers from 10 spaces situated throughout the Asia-Pacific region, like FOST in Singapore and Bank in Shanghai, and it held an academic conference. Covid travel restrictions meant few international visitors could attend the festivities, but the group hopes to expand its programming, and its audience, in the coming years for the annual event.

Pieces by Koo Donghee floating in a pond on the grounds of Deoksugung Palace.

As it is, Art Plant’s exhibition component has been drawing an audience beyond the typical art crowd. Deoksugung, where a changing of the guards ritual regularly occurs, is a popular tourist attractions, and so those arriving to experience history are also getting a major dose of art. (The art exhibitions at Versailles in France and the New York mayor’s residence, Gracie Mansion, are two parallels.)

The choice of Deoksugung, which was made before the pandemic, proved to be fortuitous not just for the wide crowd it attracts: you can view the entire show outside, in the open air, meaning that it could remain accessible even if health restrictions are ratcheted up. (Some new measures were introduced on Wednesday; the show runs through Sunday.)

Given the heritage status of the palace buildings, works could not be affixed to the walls with nails or tape. Instead, classic 1970s paintings by Kim Tschangyeul and Park Seo-bo have been laid down on platforms in one room, and intricate abstractions by Park Junghae are attached to wooden beams added to another. For the curators, it was a chance to get creative. “If we showed this work in a white cube, I would never suggest that kind of installation style,” Jang said. (Those seeking a white-cube affair can visit a branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which is also within Deoksugung.)

Haegue Yang’s Sonic Obscuring Hairy Hug, 2020.

Some works, though, required almost no effort at all to show. Im Youngzoo has conceived an audio piece available on headsets, and Woo Hannah sewed funky, organ-like props that can be borrowed and worn like handbags, allowing people to become presenters. Meanwhile, Jong Oh has conjured beguiling abstract forms high in the air by threading fishing line around trees. (Forget snapping a photograph: they’re almost invisible to the eye.)

However, when it comes to caring for conventional paintings and sculptures, open-air shows have their share of difficulties. Glass windows enclose especially precious work from the elements, and visitors at some times may find that work has vanished behind shutters. “We gave some liberty to the staff,” Yang said. “So that when they say it feels unsafe, they can close them.”

That’s perhaps a fitting nod to how political power is wielded, whether in a royal palace or a presidential office: it can occur at a public ceremony one moment, out of sight the next.

Below, more photographs of “Hare Way Object,” whose title borrows an earlier name for the area it calls home, Hare Way, which is now the Jeong-dong neighborhood.

A close-up of Bul’s work.

An installation view of works in ‘Hare Way Object.’

Jung Jihyun’s Every Haetae, 2020.

Work by Chung Heeseung from the series ‘Rose is a rose is a rose.’

This content was originally published here.

[popsixsquishcicerolipschitz]

Oldenburg/van Bruggen, Paradise Pies (II and VI)—VI, 5/6 Red, 2009, cast aluminum painted with acrylic, 6 3/8 × 13 1/4 × 9 1/2". Edition of 6 (cast 5 of 6). © 2020 Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

SPOTLIGHT

Material Matters

Pace

Enter slideshow

Material Matters April 7 – April 21, 2020 Online Viewing Room

Pace Gallery presents Material Matters, an online exhibition examining the role of materiality in artistic expression.

Curated by Andria Hickey, Senior Director and Curator, in collaboration with Joe Baptista, Vice President, and Danielle Forest, Executive Assistant, this presentation highlights the physical, formal, and symbolic transformations of material experimentation and the ways material choices provide the tools for artists to disrupt expectation, shape meaning, and embody symbolic content. Spanning over sixty years of making, it includes works by Lynda Benglis, Tara Donovan, DRIFT, Lee Ufan, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Robert Rauschenberg, Arlene Shechet, Song Dong, Sui Jianguo, Richard Tuttle, and Yin Xiuzhen.

Works by Benglis, Ufan, Shechet, and Tuttle point to a relationship between materiality, alchemy, and impulse. The role that material plays in an intuitive response to form and composition can be seen in Lynda Benglis’s circular hand-wrought “Elephant Necklaces,” Lee Ufan’s terracotta tabletop ruins, and Richard Tuttle’s It looks different Yeah, it does look different (2018), a wall piece made of wire and air-dried ceramic that continues the artist’s engagement with the subtleties of perception.

In other instances, material choices—seen in works by Yin Xuizhen and Song Dong—offer a symbolic language engaged in social and economic contexts. Yin Xiuzhen’s series “Ceremonial Instruments,” made of glazed ceramic interspersed with secondhand clothing, eschews the fine craftsmanship of classical Chinese porcelain for structures that depict a kind of industrial rubble. By embedding used clothing, the artist inextricably ties the works to the personal and the collective. Similarly, Rauschenberg’s Quorum (Unions) (1975) incorporates raw materials like paper pulp, ground tamarind seed, and copper sulfate that the artist found while collaborating with workers from a local paper mill in Ahmadabad, India, where he was working at the time. The resulting “rag-mud” and rope structure, made of materials similar to those used to build homes in the region, makes manifest the social and cultural context of the place in which the work was made.

The unexpected rises out of everyday materials in works by Donovan and the collaborators Oldenburg and van Bruggen. Through very different approaches, these artists change our perspective of familiar objects and their uses, altering our perception of the world around us. Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s Valentine Perfume (1999) depicts the waft of an oversized perfume bottle being sprayed into the air while Tara Donovan’s use of Slinkys engages in a formal dialogue with light and space that transforms the identity of the manufactured material itself.

The intrinsic qualities and meanings of fabricated objects and materials are examined by artists Song Dong and DRIFT through methods of construction and deconstruction, respectively. Song’s sculpture Usefulness of Uselessness No.8 (2013–2015)—a polygon form composed of salvaged ornamental and utilitarian housing materials—constructs new meaning out of these discarded materials that draws on notions of labor and class in the artist’s childhood home of Beijing. DRIFT’S iPhone 4s (2018) depicts a deconstructed iPhone 4s as an arrangement of blocks, each corresponding to the mass of raw material found in the phone. Visualizing this common device as a collection of blocks—in various states of color, density, opacity, and surface quality—refocuses our attention on the essential materials that make up its existence and makes visible the growing disparity between humans and the natural systems to which we are bound.

Resonating with our current state of physical immediacy and digital collectiveness, Material Matters expresses the  necessity of examining material and process to understand the ways in which artists disrupt common perceptions of the everyday, shape meaning, and create anew. The exhibition will be on view beginning April 7 through April 21, 2020.

[hikikomoridrumlab]

“Relatum 1968, remade 1994 consists of one hundred straight, flat bands of stainless steel that are each two metres long. The majority of these are loosely arranged in four piles to create the sides of a square measuring 3300 x 3300 mm. In the centre of the square, ten of the bands are interwoven with another eleven so that they form a roughly square woven ‘field’. Although the artist has provided a description explaining how to install the work, the exact composition and dimensions of this field are flexible. The original version of the sculpture, created in 1968, is no longer in existence, but it was remade in 1994 for an exhibition at Kamakura Gallery, Tokyo. This remade version was also shown in Lee Ufan’s retrospective Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2011.

In the late 1960s and the 1970s Lee was involved in the Japanese artistic movement Mono-ha (‘school of things’) and became its spokesman. Using raw and often industrial materials such as steel or iron and found natural objects such as stones, his sculptural works are centred on the essential character and presence of their materials and their interconnections. The artist has used the title Relatum for a number of his sculptural works in a range of different materials. The reduced, purist language of Relatum and its concentration on form and material are representative of Lee Ufan’s sculptural works. As the title and the flexible installation instructions suggest, the work is concerned with an open inter-relatedness. Unlike some of his later Relatum works, this work does not juxtapose two different materials, such as a stone and steel plate, but rather focuses on the dialogue of the steel pieces with each other as well as with the space around and between them. The use of the Latin term ‘relatum’, which is used, for example, in works by philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), also illustrates Lee’s interest in philosophy.

In a public conversation with Tate curator Lena Fritsch at the Korean Cultural Centre in London on 21 March 2015, the artist explained that this work is concerned with the idea of ‘connection vs. dis-connection’. To define this non-hierarchical relation, he used the term ‘encounter’. Lee has repeatedly emphasised the importance of space and time in his works: ‘A work of art, rather than being a self-complete, independent entity, is a resonant relationship with the outside. It exists together with the world, simultaneously what it is and what it is not, that is, a relatum’ (Lee in 52nd Venice Biennale 2007, unpaginated). This statement also points at the influence of East Asian thought on Lee’s work. Unlike Western dualism, East Asian philosophy and aesthetics have regarded form and non-form, space and non-space, fullness and emptiness, not as rigid opposites but rather as dynamic concepts that are intertwined. Instead of focusing on the tension between contraries that are irreconcilably opposed to each other, East Asian culture has emphasised spatial as well as temporal concepts of the ‘in-between’ (‘ma’ in Japanese).

Relatum is characteristic of Lee’s practice in its reduced language and in its focus on the interconnection of form and non-form. In addition, it exemplifies the modest artistic process on which his works are based. He used a similarly reduced abstract language in paintings such as Correspondence 1993 (Tate T07303). Lee’s artistic gestures are rooted in discipline, meditation and respect for material, rather than subjective, expressive actions. He has stated that his work ‘is accompanied by prayer and reflection, as is the case with sporting performances, a scientific experiment or life in a monastery. This is because creation is an encounter, a call and an answer’ (Lee in 52nd Venice Biennale 2007, unpaginated).”

[paintedout]

Lee Ufan

[instapicsil3]

The artist Lee Ufan’s concept for a work always precedes the action. “His studio is a very serene and uncluttered space where he’s probably only thinking about one painting at a time,” says Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu. “The moment at which he decides to paint or selects the rock, that’s the one brief moment of making, but it’s all the thinking that went into it before that trains and prepares him for the act.”⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ If, with his paintings, Lee is recording an encounter with the world, then with his sculptures, he is orchestrating one for the viewer. He is not sculpting in the classical sense—there is no chisel or mold. He is pointedly not sculpting.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Ufan has pushed the boundaries of painting and sculpture over his five-decade career. Now a flurry of major solo exhibitions are honoring the man of steel. Read more about it at the link in bio. (🖊️: Robert Sullivan, 📷: @a_gaut) https://ift.tt/2SYNKAW