Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Artist Lee Ufan returns with ’Dialogue’ series
By Kwon Mee-yoo
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Artist Lee Ufan returns to Korea with new works in his “Dialogue” exhibition held in a new annex at Gallery Hyundai in Sagan-dong, central Seoul, from today.
In his first exhibition after a major retrospective “Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from June to September, Lee presents works that are simple and understandable to viewers.
Upon entering the gallery, visitors will encounter Lee’s straightforward yet strong dots that seem to talk to them.
The exhibition is rather simple and small in scale. There are seven large oil paintings and four small water color and oil works hung on white walls on the first and second floors of the gallery.
Lee’s “Dialogue” series might look like simple strokes, but it is a result of his constant anguish over art, and elaborate calculations, balancing the double-sidedness of inside and outside. Lee applies coats of paint over and over to achieve color and texture and it might take weeks or even months as he waits for the previous coat to dry.
At a press preview of the exhibit Monday, Lee talked endlessly about his art and philosophy for about an hour-and-a-half.
“This exhibit was arranged more than a year ago and I chose to go as simple and neutral as possible,” Lee said. “The paintings were displayed in a way that anyone in the world could see the character and dignity of my works.”
He said the Guggenheim retrospective was a first for him and it provided him an opportunity to look back on his life and art.
“My sculptures and installations are site- and time-specific so I couldn’t bring old ones to the Guggenheim. It was interesting to re-produce my works from the 1960s and ’70s by myself,” he said. “So I did not make the exact same piece but interlinked what I thought then with the present.”
Lee says the artist and the work are the only important things, not the background of the artist. “I think it is gaudy to say one’s work captures the essence of Korea or Asia. I hope my works would create correspondence across the globe, regardless of the viewers’ nationality or ethnicity,” he said.
Born in Haman, South Gyeongsang Province in 1936, the artist studied in Japan and now goes back and forth between Tokyo, Paris and Seoul. “As I lived mostly out of Korea, or the outside, expression was important for me,” he said.
His expression is not just about revealing what is inside, but connecting the inside and the outside, creating an interaction. “The moment or place where the inside forms a connection with the outside, that is expression to me,” the painter added.
He said painting is an act of establishing relations on a flat surface. “For me, ‘drawing’ matters. It is a tiresome and complicated behavior, but I paint with my body and even my breathing affects the paintings. I do not paint when I inhale, but only do so when I breathe out,” the artist said.
Though he is considered a post-minimalist based on Modernism, Lee says he is actually opposite to the style. “I try to create a tension between the object painted and the blank. That is what a painting is,” Lee said. “My work simplifies to the limit — just a dot. However, I want it to create a vibration with the empty space in the canvas, the wall and even the space beyond the canvas and the audience to feel the vibration at this exhibition.”
The exhibition runs through Dec. 18. For more, visit www.galleryhyundai.com or call (02) 2287-3500.