[Weekender] Lee Ufan: art of encounter in New York

A view of Lee Ufan's retrospective that came to an end on Sept. 28 at the Solomon R.

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Stones and iron rods "stretch into the realms of the universe, to become clumps of time and a channel for conversation".

By Lee Hyo-won

NEW YORK - Music compositions are often considered incomplete in and of themselves. Only when they reach the listener through the act of performance do they find their full meaning.

Lee Ufan strives to achieve such "art of encounter" through his creations.

Aside from wishing to become a composer as a boy and still secretly envying musicians, a fact he revealed during this recent interview with The Korea Times, to the surprise of even his assistant, Ufan's latest exhibition, "Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity", at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, was designed to evoke discourse with visitors in a way performance art often does.

"My work, whether it be a sculpture, painting or poem, is never complete; it constantly moves to become whole as it reaches the viewer and this is why it remains alive", Lee said, ahead of the show's closing last week after a three-month run.

Canvases were displayed along the walls while seemingly random pieces of rock and iron rods, pads of cotton and stainless steel plates were dispersed across the floor. It was easy to see that some were paintings - beautiful in their striking simplicity and sense of incompleteness, at the same time each dot complete in itself as if containing the universe. Others, however, defied one's conventional idea of what sculpture entails.

The rock, Lee said, represents the ancientness of the Earth while iron embodies manmade industrialization. Taking these objects from their natural environments, such as a forest or factory, and juxtaposing them in the alien space of a gallery produces a sort of cognitive dissonance. Yet he pointed out that the piece is in tune with contemporary life, since modern man is exposed to both greens and concrete.

"They stretch into the realms of the universe, to become clumps of time and a channel for conversation between industrialism (modernity) and nature. Modern man does not live completely alienated from nature", he said.

A rare occasion

It is the first time a Korean artist had been featured in a solo retrospective at the iconic museum since the late video artist Nam June Paik, and the third time an Asian has had the honor. Lee said he never before got to see such a full breadth of his work - 90 pieces from the 1960s to the present - all in one place. And so, before conversing with others through his paintings and sculptures, the 75-year-old was able to hold a dialogue within.

"This is my first retrospective. The Guggenheim show is the largest exhibition I've ever had; it was a chance to showcase my best pieces. It was a chance for me to examine the past, to see things in retrospect - to organize and self-reflect, and moreover, to think about where I am headed in the future".

The artist spent his youth "constantly running toward something", and did not have much time to pause and breathe. "If I could go back to my youth I might have become a novelist perhaps", he said with a grin.

Born in Haman, South Gyeongsang Province, in 1936, Lee witnessed political upheavals that beset the Korean Peninsula from the Japanese colonization (1910-45) to the Korean War (1950-53). He loved listening to music but gave up his dreams of becoming a musician when he saw how one of his peers was already proficient in playing the piano. "The closest access I ever had to classical music was the radio", he recalled.

He studied painting at Seoul National University, despite the social stigma at the time that "serious boys didn't study such crafts that don't have a promising future". He soon moved to Japan, where he earned a degree in philosophy from Nihon University, Tokyo, with a focus on phenomenology and structuralism.

He has since been active in parts of Asia and Europe, and is considered a seminal figure in Japan's Mono-ha movement and Korea's monochrome school. His art and writings were part of a radical global rethinking that transformed contemporary art in the 1960s and '70s, where objects were recast as dynamic events occurring in everyday time and space.

Rooted in his philosophical stance, Lee is noted for moving beyond the binaries of Eastern and Western aesthetics.

"I was born in Korea, studied in Japan and opened a studio in France. Even though I've spent all those years globetrotting I don't think my 'Korean DNA' changed all that much. But I don't sell my (cultural) background. Regardless of where I am, my life experience and artworks are rooted in encounters with others".

A new encounter

This exhibition marked a new encounter since it was his debut North American museum retrospective.

"Having been based in Europe for about 40 years I have to admit that I looked down upon America, because I thought it had a shallow cultural base. But I was struck by the neutrality and diversity in New York - because everyone comes from such diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds people regard you as an individual, from a neutral perspective", he said, adding how he also developed an appreciation for the performing arts scene in the Big Apple. "I watched a marvelous New York City Ballet performance, and some of the dancers came to my show".

Lee enjoyed working with the particularities of the Guggenheim's interior, for which he created a site-specific installation. "Dialogue - space" presented a single stroke of paint on each of three adjacent walls of an empty room, which he calls "an open site of power in which things and space interact vividly".

The spatial design created by the museum's signature spiraling ramp allowed one to perceive Lee's work as an organic whole.
This reporter was struck by how physical and rhythmic the museum-going experience was: how a single gray-toned dot - painted on a white canvas that turns into an extension of the building's white wall - became a frame of reference to feel her presence here and now, to become sharply aware of her surroundings. Moving from one work to another down the ramp marked moments of encountering the void, or "moving to keep things whole" as the poet Mark Strand put it.

Similar to how the silence between notes, rather than sound itself, often defines the tempi and nuance in a given music piece, the apparently random-looking single dot in the artist's painting is meant to serve as a point of reference for the viewer to feel one's sense of being, space and time, stretching out into infinity.

"My work refrains from forcing ideas onto the viewer; it is free from presenting specific images, meanings or results. This can inspire adverse reactions, since it is about anti-objectifying, anti-objects", Lee said.

While he gives the viewer the freedom to interpret works on their own, he says he does not pursue freedom: "Freedom is a relative thing. It is relative to confinement". In a similar light, the artist may be known for his creations but he stressed the grace of non-creation.

"Modern society is obsessed with production, be it material goods or human activity. As much as I am an artist that creates, I equally focus on not creating. It's not about actualizing all of your ideas. One has to learn to refrain, because production does not necessarily equate progress".

And so, his upcoming exhibition in Seoul will not be about showcasing new works as much as it will be about refining his existing oeuvre.

"There will be some new pieces but I think it's a process of upgrading the quality of ideas and theories I've been long working on".
The Guggenheim show presented an opportunity for unique encounters, but meeting the artist himself proved to be the most memorable.

The artist moved and spoke briskly, without pause or hesitation. Initially appearing hard-eyed like the stereotypical philosopher, he would be fast to correct inconsistencies in a sharp-witted manner. But in no time he softened with an innocent child's grin and a warm openness to converse with less mature minds.

Korean fans of Lee's work can look forward to experiencing his art of encounter beginning mid-November at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul. More details to be announced. Visit www.galleryhyundai.com.