Oil and pigment on canvas

31.8 × 41 cm. 12 1/2 × 16 1/8 in.

Signed in English on bottom right; signed and titled in English, and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Tokyo Gallery, Japan
Important Private Collection, Asia

Note: A label of Japan Tokyo Gallery is affixed on the reverse

This work is accompanied by a note of confirmation issued by Tokyo Gallery, Japan

Depurative and Poetic Universe of Points
Lee Ufan: Infinite Writing through One Point One World

“Even though the self is limited, it can still deliver the infinite relationships with the outside world. Artistic expression is the revelation of infinite dimensions.”
——Lee Ufan

As one of the most prominent Korean artists in the contemporary global art world, Lee has exhibited at major art institutions around the world, including the National Museum of Modern Art in Seoul in 1994, the 52nd Venice Biennale Reverberations in 2007, the retrospective Marking Infinity at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2011, the Palace of Versailles in France in 2014, the Hyogo Prefecture Museum of Art in 2023 and other solo exhibitions. His works have been included in the collections of many well-known art institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the Tate Gallery in London, which shows that he has already established an outstanding position in both domestic and overseas contemporary art circle.

As an active painter, sculptor and philosopher in Korea, Japan and Europe, Lee has extensive cross-cultural and interdisciplinary experience. Having grown up under the influence of Oriental poetry, calligraphy, painting and philosophy, Lee resolutely transferred to a Japanese University to major in philosophy because he recognized its importance when he studied oil painting and got inspirations from the Japanese modern art at the School of Art of Seoul National University in South Korea in 1958.

His rich knowledge over the years makes himself a pioneer in breaking the Western standard of abstract creation and integrating minimalist aesthetics and Eastern philosophy into his creation. Since the 1970s, Lee has been recognized as a leading proponent of Mono-ha, the Japanese “thing movement” of the 1970s, and Dansaekhwa, the Korean “monochromatic painting movement” from the 1960s to 1980s. During his European tour in 1971, Lee met the works of Lucio Fotana, founder of spatialism, and those of Yves Klein, leader of neo-realism. This encounter deepened his artistic goal of “creating ingenious forms through the connection between the external world and the self”. The famous From Point and From Line series, which lasted from 1972 to 1984, were born since then.

The Classical Representative of Key Transition

From Point at this auction was finished in 1984, regarded as the key representative work marking the transition from From Point series (1972 - 1984) to the From Wind series (1982 - 1986). In this work, Lee filled his brush with homemade paint, and repeatedly painted “pen marks of dots” until the paint ran out, showing an effect of “from emptiness to being, and then to nothing”. Such an effect of gradual change is known as “infinite repetition”. Standing at the junction of the two series, From Point not only integrates the form of the “point” and the concept of “infinit”, but also builds a Zen space full of calligraphy charm through the wind-like freedom.

The Rhythm of Life Between Breaths

Recalling his training in calligraphy and painting as a child, Li found inspirations in the calligraphy stroke “dot”, with a strong cobalt blue brush leaving the most full and decisive line on the top left of the work and delivering a steady sense like a mountain. Subsequently, the brush stretched to the four corners of the canvas, or lift up like a raised sail, or swifted fall like the surge of waves, continuous, but not overlapped, like thousands of rocks and valleys, as well as the audio vibrations, full of abstract but vivid associations.

During the fundamental training of the eastern ink and calligraphy, Lee's repeated depiction of dots and lines is regarded as the best way to “control and manipulate the breath”. For Lee, the movement of the brush itself connects to the rhythm of the creator. Breaking through the rigorous and prudent dot strokes of the past, at this moment, his light and flowing calligraphic strokes give rise to a sense of purity, vividness and sincerity. Each stroke, like a breath, from deep to shallow, from heavy to light, gradually reached the state of dissolving into nothingness. Only the particles of blue paints infiltrated into the texture of the canvas, forming a “point” in the micro spectacle.

Poetic Blue Landscape of Freedom

French artist Yves Klein once said, “My monochrome paintings are landscapes of freedom.” Lee Ufan, who also regards blues as the main colour of his work, chooses the cobalt blue, which is deeper, quieter and full of Zen. In From Point, the classic combination of blue and white, which are more solemn in the eastern tradition, appears an elegant and beautiful intersection like the blue and white porcelain of the Korean dynasty, shimmering and producing an ethereal detachment. To highlight the precision of beginnings and endings of in every single blue stroke, Lee traces the way animal glue was used in Japanese silk glue painting and Chinese rock colour painting, mixing the glue with blue mineral pigments so that the pigments will retain their natural characteristics but also reveal the original texture and tone of the canvas. Accompanied by the poetic imagination given by blue, through the dance of brush strokes, the audience seems to see the speed of wind, the texture of water, the transmission of light, the vastness of the stars, and finally return to the origin of the universe. As Lee Ufan once said, “The universe begins with one point and ends with one point.” Through the presentation of the points, he is going to the infinite depth of the universe, in which every stroke and every dot matter in the dimensions of space and time. And the point created by Lee Ufan will eventually transform into a new form in the viewer's meditation.

Price estimate:
HKD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 51,300 – 76,900

Auction Result:
HKD: 900,000