CORRESPONDANCE

Lee U fan, one of the important pioneers in Japan's anti-formalism, Mono-ha, as a principal theorist and artist while he studied in Japan, is a leading figure from the Dansaekhwa movement. Since the early 1970s, after exploring Western Modernism, Lee Ufan started to create his most significant series and in which he managed to adopt simple elements to explore a bond connecting an individual with others or an exterior world, depicting the endless cycle of time. In the 1990s, Lee Ufan obtained a new interpretation of the concept "limitlessness." Correspondance (Lot 507) and Correspondance (Lot 511), painted in 1993 and 1994, exemplify Lee's matured style of probing the space and empty space between the paint. The subtle gradation carefully arranged across the still canvas reveals an intrinsic rhythm of the artist 's breath. An overlapping curiosity on the subject of infinity is apparent throughout his entire work. The bare canvas is the infinite space where Lee faces the world as it is. Lee seeks an encounter with the world in relationship with others, rather than just limited to a sphere within himself. In an understated yet poetic gesture, Lee consistently seeks to relate himself to the world through minimal interaction with his work.