.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Outstanding artists, regardless of whether the circumstances are favourable or adverse, always find ways of challenging themselves and finding new creative directions.
As a child, Lee was educated in traditional East Asian philosophy - the intrinsic element that later came to define his artistic success. After establishing himself as a key theorist and artist of the Mono-ha in the 1960s, he gained insight into the interactive nature of media, subject matter, and surrounding spaces. For three months in 1971, Lee exhibited and travelled in Europe, during which time he came across works by Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein in Paris, while engaging intellectually with other artists and philosophers. From these experiences he drew the conclusion that art should be a means of connecting the self and the outside world, empowered by reasonably limiting the creator’s or artist’s ego. This concept, together with the notion of ‘repetition of the infinite,’ gave birth to the pivotal series in Lee Ufan’s career - From Point and From Line.
Here the repetition of the point is not just a geometric figure or pattern - it has become a living, organic entity, possessing a rhythmic motion and its own direction, from which derives the natural grace of its interrelation and resonance with the outside world. In executing From Point, Lee loaded his brush with pigment and dabbed, each time drawing the brush down and to the left and stopping abruptly. The action was then repeated moving left to right, until no more paint was left on the brush. The points gradually disappear, marking their existence, and from the order and regularity of their trajectories he derives a richly layered and boundless universe.
As a child, Lee was educated in traditional East Asian philosophy - the intrinsic element that later came to define his artistic success. After establishing himself as a key theorist and artist of the Mono-ha in the 1960s, he gained insight into the interactive nature of media, subject matter, and surrounding spaces. For three months in 1971, Lee exhibited and travelled in Europe, during which time he came across works by Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein in Paris, while engaging intellectually with other artists and philosophers. From these experiences he drew the conclusion that art should be a means of connecting the self and the outside world, empowered by reasonably limiting the creator’s or artist’s ego. This concept, together with the notion of ‘repetition of the infinite,’ gave birth to the pivotal series in Lee Ufan’s career - From Point and From Line.
Here the repetition of the point is not just a geometric figure or pattern - it has become a living, organic entity, possessing a rhythmic motion and its own direction, from which derives the natural grace of its interrelation and resonance with the outside world. In executing From Point, Lee loaded his brush with pigment and dabbed, each time drawing the brush down and to the left and stopping abruptly. The action was then repeated moving left to right, until no more paint was left on the brush. The points gradually disappear, marking their existence, and from the order and regularity of their trajectories he derives a richly layered and boundless universe.