The place, so parisian, like a cave of treasures. And this underground space, restricted, ritualized, and white, fitting for Lee Ufan, whose work induces another way of”Dwell time”, the title of his retrospective at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (until 30 September).

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as Soon as you descend to this kingdom silent painting, one experiences a different relation to the real, it sharpens her eyes, calms her breathing. This painter, sculptor, poet and philosopher, was born in South Korea, near Busan, in 1936. As his friend and elder, the late Yun Hyong-keun (1928-2007), exhibited at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice until November 24, Lee Ufan is a figure of the “Dansaekhwa” (current monochrome of post-war Korea), and one of the foremost theorists of the current avant-garde japanese “Mono-ha” (School of things).

With its precise use of raw materials, it creates a universe where the individual feels without words, or translator the lesson of philosophical minimalism sensual (From Line, 1979). His painting, here in the spotlight, also operates by subtraction. The full and the empty, the line or point, the line or the spiral, the white, or the color, color, monochrome, intense or faints over the button, this is the range of this musician’s art (From Point, 1976).

“From Line” (1978) and “From Point” (1980), by Lee Ufan. From Line, 1978 // From Point, 1980

“What are we watching? Of executed lines from a single source, stretching slowly until the end of the socket, like long breaths. Points, repeating successively one behind the other up to the exhaustion of the material on the brush, in the manner of notes that shatter to the silence. The formula, through repetition and difference, seems to lead into a limitless space and infinite time,” explains Jean-Marie Gallais, the commissioner of its declination in 15 rooms at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

Lee Ufan
Kamel Mennour Gallery
28 avenue Matignon, VIIIe arrondissement of Paris
Phone: 01 79 74 12 20.
Hours: from Monday to Saturday from 11h to 19h.
Until 20 July