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41 - 41. 41W LEE UFAN (B. 1936) Relatum 1978 Corten steel and nat…
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Estimate €100,000 - €150,000
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Description
41. 41W LEE UFAN (B. 1936) Relatum 1978 Corten steel and natural stone 277 x 190 x 1 cm. 109 1/16 x 74 13/16 x 3/8 in. Made in 1978. Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner in 2003 This work is sold by designation. For all enquiries and details, please contact the department. In an intervention that is as minimal as it is overwhelmingly intense, Lee Ufan applies his creative gesture with the recollection that gives his art its extreme sensitivity. This work (Relatum, 1978), where light seems to rest, has been taken over by the breath of the invisible and of eternity. While in his paintings the artist favours the imprint of the gesture, giving it just the right amount of discreet presence, in his sculpture he advocates immobility, bareness and the fortuitously controlled meeting of the organic forces of thought, the vanished hand, air and time. In 1968, Lee Ufan won the critical acclaim for his essay Des objets inanimés à l'existence vivante (From Inanimate Objects to Living Existence), and became the theoretician of Mono-ha, which emphasises the topological relationship between the place and the object, as well as the balance of the encounter with the viewer; this earned him an invitation to the Paris Biennale in 1971, to present this movement to Europeans. Although he studied poetry, painting and calligraphy in Korea, it was Japan (where the artist moved in 1956) that allowed his art to blossom; It was also his adopted country that, in 2010, gave him the ultimate accolade of having a museum named after him on the island of Naoshima (a joint creation by him and the architect Tadao Ando), which the artist would say is like "a cave that has been there since the dawn of time, like a maternal womb". Whatever the setting, his work becomes a sensitive experience. Nimbed with a singular aura, his work has seduced the Château de Versailles, which, for its tenth contemporary art exhibition in 2017, chose this artist who had already invaded its gardens in 2014, after having exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Tate Modern (London), the Kunstmuseum (Bonn) and the Yokohama Art Museum. From his philosophical readings, the artist maintains a particular closeness to Spinoza's Infinite, Kant's Thing, Heidegger's Being and Kitaro Nishida's Topos. His creations, witnesses to immemorial precepts, incline his hand, whose lightness seems to him to come from the air and the wind, to move the stone or the brush where the correspondence is required. In his art, emptiness becomes a physical space, a presence, a path. This sculpture, which we are privileged to present (it belongs to one of the most demanding collections in the world), brings together stone (a material he has been using since 1960) and steel plates in a fertile antagonism, bringing nature and industrial society into resonance. Lee Ufan does not choose these rock fragments at random: "I look for stones in quarries, a stone of a certain size will be associated with a metal sheet of a certain size, their relationship is essential (...). I feel a mysterious force in front of these stones. An absolute presence emanates from them", says the artist in an interview with Paolo Reversi in October 2025 for Numéro art. The elements that make up the sculpture, chosen for their materiality and their apparent simplicity, enter into a relationship only in the place where the artist welcomes them, and his unobtrusive gesture reveals a space, a discussion, born of the invisible links he has woven. "My body also intervenes to make things happen," he sums up. Although he works little with natural or artificial materials, their selection and positioning in the chosen space is the seminal moment of his creation. "Relatum" (relation in Latin) is the name given by the artist to all his sculptures since 1972. The steel plates, born of thought, offer a subtle poetic tension: they are a separation, a wall, a door... so many invitations... While the stone is anchored in the origin, erected from all eternity against the whirlwind of movements, close to where the roots sink. In the age-old silence, the stones are the whispers of the Earth. Their symbiotic encounter gives rise to a work of enchanting, thaumaturgic hieraticism. The art of this poet-sculptor is made up of correspondences and infinity...
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About the sale Post-War & Contemporary Art including the Cluzel Collection
Auction location
Auction time 06/04/2026 at 4:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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