Distilling more than six decades of considered experimentation into a series of new paintings and sculptures created especially for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance is a new solo exhibition by internationally renowned Korean artist Lee Ufan.
An artist, writer, philosopher and poet, Lee is widely recognised for his deceptively minimal paintings and sculptures and sparing use of simple materials, including stone, steel and canvas, to create a quiet force that encourages contemplation and consideration of the physical and intellectual self.
Lee’s approach to art embraces ideas of classical and modern European and Asian philosophy, and he believes in the power of emptiness, known as ma, to generate both harmony and tension between objects and people.
The exhibition comprises eight entirely new works, including four paintings in saturated colours created between 2022 to 2024, and four new sculptures that are a continuation of the Relatum series that the artist began in the late 1960s, juxtaposing large stones and steel plates. The artist has designed the exhibition spaces and selected the imposing granite stones from regional New South Wales.
Inspired by his time in Sydney, Lee has created two new works to accompany his exhibition. An impromptu wall drawing titled Drawing – open space within the Quiet Resonance exhibition and a gathering of rocks, Relatum – stone family, installed on the grass outside Naala Nura yesterday morning. Once the rocks were carefully placed, Lee painted one small rock blue and another red, an innovation initiated as part of his major retrospective at the Berlin National Gallery earlier this year.
“It is a privilege to welcome the esteemed contemporary artist Lee Ufan back to the Art Gallery of New South Wales almost 50 years after his work was first presented here as part of the 1976 Biennale of Sydney,” said Art Gallery of New South Wales director, Michael Brand. “This free exhibition is an opportunity for every visitor to experience the beauty and power of these works, created by one of the world’s most significant and influential artists.”
“I am thrilled to announce that thanks to a generous bequest for the acquisition of Asian art by the late James Brownlow and Doug Small, the Art Gallery has commissioned Lee Ufan to create a new sculpture that will be installed outside the Art Gallery next year alongside 7000 oaks (7000 Eichen) by Joesph Beuys, acknowledging that the two artists were contemporaries,” said Mr Brand.
“Lee’s minimal intervention and thoughtful placement animate the relationship between the installation and its surrounding space and consider the human response to the encounter. His conceptual and restrained 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 work,” said Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance curator and Art Gallery of New South Wales senior curator of Asian art, Melanie Eastburn.
When Lee’s work was first shown at the Art Gallery in 1976, he showed Situation II, a work comprising a single lightbulb suspended over a bare canvas on the floor, resulting in an interplay of illumination and shadow. As part of Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance, the artist will present an extension of this original work using a large boulder and lightbulb to create shadows that encourage contemplation of the impact of light on our perception of space.
Born in Korea in 1936, Lee lives between Japan and France. He studied painting in Seoul before relocating to Tokyo in 1956 to study philosophy. In the 1960s he was a founder of Japan’s Mono-ha movement, which emphasises relationships between natural and industrial materials, and between objects and their viewers. Lee was also associated with the Dansaekhwa monochrome painting movement that emerged in Korea in the 1950s as part of a search for a universal aesthetic that was separate from tradition.
Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance at the Art Gallery of New South Wales follows recent exhibitions of his work at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, Centre Pompidou Metz and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
The artist has three museums dedicated to his work: the Space Lee Ufan in Busan, Korea, the Lee Ufan Museum on Naoshima Island, Japan, and Lee Ufan Arles in France. Lee Ufan was recently announced as a recipient of the 2024 Isamu Noguchi Award, an annual award honouring creatives whose work exhibits qualities of artistic excellence that are shared with Isamu Noguchi.
On the perimeter of Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance is a new collection display also curated by Eastburn that draws connections between works from the Art Gallery collection and the ideas explored in the exhibition. This display presents rarely seen ceramics, paintings, works on paper and sculptures by artists including Korean photographer Koo Bohnchang, Japanese artist and key member of the Mono-ha (School of Things) movement Sekine Nobuo, Singaporean-British artist Kim Lim, New York based minimalist and performance artist Kazuko Miyamoto, and a selection of avant-garde Ikebana ceramics.
Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery Road, The Domain (Sydney)
Exhibition: 31 August 2024 – September 2025
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au for details.
Image: Lee Ufan with his work Relatum – position 1968/2024 as part of the Lee Ufan: Quiet Resonance exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South © Lee Ufan – photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins