Lee Ufan

Date and time

15 Oct 2026 · 18:12

Venue

Casa de Serralves

Location

Porto

Type

Exhibition

Lee Ufan (b. 1936) is a South Korean artist whose practice has redefined material, space and perception in post war art. As a core figure and principal theoretician of the Japanese Mono ha (“School of Things”) avant garde movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lee helped shift art away from representation toward direct encounters with materials and their spatial relationships. Mono ha artists foregrounded raw, unaltered materials — stones, wood, metal, glass — placed in simple juxtapositions to reveal their inherent qualities and activate the space around them. Running parallel to this was Lee’s connection to Dansaekhwa , the Korean monochrome painting movement of the 1970s. In his painting practice Lee uses minimal, often single brushstrokes on expansive, meticulously prepared surfaces to explore breath, time, emptiness and presence. These gestures enact a peaceful dialogue between mark making and the perception of void, inviting measured and quiet contemplation. Central to Lee’s sculptural work is the concept of Relatum — a term he adopted in the early 1970s to emphasize the dialogue between elements rather than the autonomous object. In Relatum works, large natural stones,