Moving In Many Directions, All At Once
Space and time, time and space - the material of minimalist artist and philosopher, Lee Ufan
Friends, stoners, creatives, artists,
I spent the last month on the move. Rome, Milan, Lake Como, Portofino, Paris, Brittany, Quiberon — as I type I am hearing inner voices echoing the luxury of such movements. Amidst all the movement, it has been difficult to find the time to write, and not just write but write well.
Having only begun moving mountains, 5 months ago, a few things have become crystal clear — one being, how difficult it is for me to gather my thoughts while multitasking. Don’t get me wrong, this last month has been such an incredible pocket of time spent immersed in inspiration, but words have been slow rolling. . . and I want to acknowledge that. Thank you all for being here, despite my fluctuating rhythm.
I arrived home a little over a week ago, and in that time my partner chose to stay on (in France), and explore an area we both love, Arles. Arles, is a city located in the Provence region of southern France, perched on the banks of the Rhône river. It’s famed for inspiring the paintings of Van Gogh and Gauguin— and in Ancient times, was once a provincial capital of Rome.
Arles also happens to be muse of internationally acclaimed Korean artist, Lee Ufan. Lee is most renown for his practice of juxtaposition of natural and industrial material with site-specific installations — central to his work is an exploration between space and time.
Lee Ufan Arles, Hôtel Vernon, Arles, 2022. © Lee Ufan, ADAGP, Paris, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris.
His paintings, sometimes worked in series over several decades, are also the support of reflections on time, on gesture, on the relationship between the full and the empty. Personal expression has faded into a regularly renewed quest for infinity.
Relatum - The stage
The stage
2022
Requiem
Alyscamps Roman necropolis
2021
A few days before she was set to return home, my partner sent me a text with the below inscription — a moving meditation from Ufan on the job of the artist, the importance of non-making, and being penetrated by the ambivalent things that exist between ideas and reality.
I read the below writings, I re-read them.
For now, I am heeding the wisdom embedded below, and practicing a non-making. What does that look like for you?
Correspondence
“In the past, the job of the artist was to give form to his or her own ideas or the ideas of the community as something visible and to copy objects found in the outside world or society. This kind of reproduction of form is ultimately a problem of logos or technique. It involves no exploration of, or contact with, the unknown. Rather than making an object that is to be seen, I prefer to offer a visual opportunity to encounter the world.
Works of art cannot be ideas or reality as such. They are ambivalent things that exist between ideas and reality, being penetrated by both and influencing them in turn. Rather than being objects or texts, artworks are opened up as incomplete territories that contain contradictions.
In order to take a different approach from giving form to images, meanings or things from the outside world, it is necessary to keep a distance from all of these things. Making art might be described as calling things together or making a site for dialogue between self and others. I hope to see art come into being through the formation of a relationship between making and not making.
Using my hand, a brush, and pigment, I face the canvas on the floor. I hold my breath and slowly lay down one stroke (or two or three). The energetic, gray touch of the brush and the taut, white field stimulate each other, producing vibrations in the surrounding air. The space of the painting is opened up by the correspondence between painting and non-painting.
A plain natural stone, a steel plate (which is solidified for of components extracted from stone), and existing space are arranged in a simple, organic fashion. Through my planning and the dynamic relationship between these elements, a scene is created in which opposition and acceptance are intertwined. A quiet sense of tension arises and expands around them. A sculptural site is opened up through the linkage between making and non-making.
In any case, it is an important idea to limit making and plan interactions with non-made things. Placing limitations on making is a route to thoroughgoing elevation and purification of the self. It is an attitude of confronting the organic qualities of nature and the mechanism of the universe. Art enables an awareness that includes the unknown and perceptions transcending language because it involves a world of non-identity.
The mutual limitation that takes place between inside and outside purifies the act of making and pushes it to a higher dimension. It might be said that the desire to polish the self and move to a higher dimension by interactive limitation leads to endless repetition. The expansiveness of a dialogue of correspondences suggests the breath and sublimity of eternity.
Human beings live with dreams of transcendence. Art can be described as something that foreshadows and encourages reflection and leaps of imagination. Just as human beings are physical beings combining internality and externality, works of art should be living sites that mediate and sublimate self and others.”
- Lee Ufan
“Lee Ufan was born in Korea in 1936 and lives and works in Paris, New York and Japan. He is the artist theoretician of the avant-garde movement Mono-ha ("the school of things"), a Japanese artistic movement that developed in parallel with minimalist and radical movements. Mono-ha is often considered to be very close to the attitudes and choices that nourished Arte Povera in Europe.
Lee Ufan's sculptures are presented as connections between stones or wood chosen from nature and industrial materials, while his painting tends towards a single sign, towards meditation and the evocation of emptiness.”
For more on Lee Ufan, please visit:
https://www.studioleeufan.org/