Biography

이우환 

李禹煥, Lee Ufan

An artist and a philosopher, Lee Ufan (1936-) is one of the founding members of Mono-ha, a movement largely defined by the artist's seminal texts from the late 1960s. Not only did Lee act as a vital conduit between the Korean and Japanese art scenes after his move to Japan in 1956, but was a pivotal figure who introduced Dansaekhwa to a wider international audience from these two countries. The artist's From Point and From Line series in particular, which Lee began in the early 1970s, established many profound connections to the principles of the Dansaekhwa movement.

Another featured work is Relatum (1968–) which suggest an individual element within a relation defined by both space and object. It expresses Lee’s idea that things are formed through their relationships with the world around them and that nothing exists by itself. This philosophy is reflected not only in his artworks but also appears repeatedly in his writings, paralleling the stance he has adopted in life. South Korea and Japan, East and West, practice and theory, painting and sculpture, subject and absence, nature and artifice, making and not making - between these binary constructs, Lee himself functions as an energy or medium in given spaces or situations, searching for moments of tension and equilibrium within a certain space and time.

From the 1980s onward, Lee developed four additional series of paintings, From Winds (1982–86), With Winds (1987–91), Correspondence (1991–2006), and Dialogue (2006–), all of which explore the dynamic between temporality, gesture, and space.