Lee Ufan

Beyond Venice
Response (3)

2023-2024
Acrylic on canvas

Lee Ufan is a leading exponent of the Japanese  Mono-Ha movement, which focuses on the use of raw  and minimally processed materials. In 1991, he began the  Correspondence series of paintings, characterized by a  pair of gray-blue brushstrokes created by mixing oil with  crushed stone pigments and applied to a large white  surface. The relationship between painted/unpainted  surface and occupied/emptied space is central to Lee  Ufan’s practice. 

For Palazzo Diedo, Lee Ufan has produced a series of  works titled Beyond Venice, comprising, in addition to the  three large paintings, a permanent ceiling fresco and three installations.

Beyond Venice
Relatum - Sound box

2024
Steel, stone, black paint

In Ufan’s installations, the space is at once integral and  crowded, balancing on the edge between doing and not doing. His works highlight the process, the materials, and  the viewer’s involvement in the experience. His art is a  blend of aspects of minimalism, land art, and traditional  Asian concepts of space and the landscape. At its core is  the pursuit of transcendence: the focus is not on creating  artistic objects but on using art to make the surrounding  silence and emptiness visible, referring to them as “the  great dazzling cosmos.”

Beyond Venice
Relatum - The Notion of Stone

2024
Stone, paint, light bulb

The minimalist Relatum sculpture series is composed  of one or more light-colored, round stones and dark,  rectangular metal plates. The artist enriches the dialogue  with the Eastern world by integrating large natural  stones into the space, fostering interactions of profound  poetic intensity between the forms and the materials.  Additionally, he explores new spatial relationships through  sculptures crafted from organic materials.

Response

2024
Fresco

The artist made the Response fresco expressly for  Palazzo Diedo.