Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan, a key contemporary artist on the Korean scene, was born in 1936 in Haman-gun, South Korea then under Japanese domination. This marks the starting point of the duality of his work, which vacillates between Korean roots and Japanese ties. Honored by the Japanese government for his participation in the development of national contemporary art, the artist addresses the themes of nature, emptiness, space and energy, while exploring the diversity of materials. Painter but also sculptor, philosopher and poet, he thus attaches particular importance to materials and seeks to bring experiences to spectators. Indeed, his paintings tend to create a dialogue between time and surrounding space, while his sculptures interact with space. The artist thus manages to draw attention to what is not seen in the first place, to redefine the existing.

After studying oriental painting, poetry and calligraphy in Seoul, he moved to Japan in 1956 to take courses in philosophy. It was then at Nihon University in Tokyo that he discovered thinkers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Merleau Ponty who would influence his thought and his art.

At the end of the 60s, he became an art critic and then leader of the Mono-ha current, in Japanese the school of things, which seeks to make pure objects, neither manufactured nor altered, enter into dialogue with each other. This approach reflects the artist's desire to take an interest in the relationships between materials, space and spectator. His work is based on his philosophical studies and claims to be universal and immediate. He goes beyond the barriers of language by offering a non-figurative art based on gestures and the meeting between materials and void or even space. He then redefined Western art at the Paris Biennale in 1971, where he presented Mono-ha for the first time in Europe.

Lee Ufan made a name for himself by exhibiting in many prestigious institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Kunstmuseum in Bonn in Germany, the Art Museum in Yokohama, in Japan or the Palace of Versailles in France in 2014. In addition, he opened his museum in Naoshima in 2010.

His work therefore today has an international scope and he has become one of the most recognized contemporary artists. Residing in France since the 1970s, the artist will soon open his foundation for contemporary art in Arles in the former Hôtel Vernon, “very well placed, near the arenas, right in the ruins of Roman civilization. It is a place inhabited by the same family for several generations, which also gave me a good impression of the time. And the dialogue between my work and these fragments of ruins inspires me. "