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LEE UFANINHABITING TIME

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................5

2. LEE UFAN ...................................................................................................7

3. EXHIBITION ITINERARY ..............................................................................9

4. AN EXCEPTIONNAL COLLABORATION WITH RYUICHI SAKAMOTO .................... 24

5. FOUR QUESTIONS FOR THE EXHIBITION CURATOR ..................................25

6. EVENTS FOR SCHOOLS AND YOUNG VISITORS / ASSOCIATED EVENTS ...27

7. THE PARTNERS ........................................................................................30

8. PRESS IMAGES ........................................................................................33

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Peinture à l’eau sur les pierres, 1998, Vallée Hakone © Atelier Lee Ufan et tous droits réservés

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1. INTRODUCTION

From February 27, 2019, the Centre Pompidou Metz will present a retrospective of Lee Ufan, tracing his career from the early works of the late 1960s to his most recent creations. The exhibition offers a defining vision of Ufan's unique oeuvre, showing how his artistic vocabulary has evolved over more than five decades.

Countering Frank Stella's celebrated formula and Minimalist slogan 'What you see is what you see', Lee Ufan favours an alternative: 'What you see is what you don't see'. As a painter, sculptor, poet, philosopher and creator of environments, Ufan's works function as revelatory devices, drawing our attention to empty space, the tension generated between untouched areas of canvas, the distance dividing two elements of a sculpture, the viewer's position, effects of light and shade: everything we fail to notice at first glance, but which is there nonetheless, playing its role in the making and impact of a work of art.

Born in Korea in 1936, when the country was under Japanese occupation, Lee Ufan recevied a traditional, Confucian education which was to profoundly affect his subsequent development as an artist. From the outset of his career in the 1960s, Ufan strove to achieve a balance between his Korean roots, his links to Japan where he studied and worked, and his growing attachment to the West (he exhibited at the Paris Biennale of 1971).

At the intersection of three cultures, Lee Ufan's work is universal and immediate in intent. Immediate in the sense that language Is not a requirement: Ufan often describes how he made his first works while planning to study literature and philosophy in Japan, but failed to master the language. He opted for visual communication instead, by-passing both language and figurative representation, and using sensitive interventions to provoke 'encounters': the encounter between natural and industrial materials, for example, in his celebrated sculpture series Relatum. As part of Japan's Mono-ha ('School of Things') movement, he strove for a new defintion of art, distanced from Western norms and codes.

Lee Ufan's works are conceived as living experiences, bridging the worlds of philosophy and the visual arts. His sculptures play on our notion of space, while his paintings interact with time. Ufan strives endlessly to master infinity and to 'inhabiting time.'

Ufan's works have a powerful, aphoristic quality - each is a disconcertingly simple, visual and phsyical translation of philosophical principles, far removed from any attempt at figuration. Reflecting his highly personal vision of contemporary art, the exhibition offers a meditative pathway through and around the artist's themes of choice - the relationship between things and their surrounding space, forms and voids, but also the dialogue between action and non-action.

The exhibition itinerary offers an insight into successive or parallel phases in Lee Ufan's career, through pivotal works and often little-known 'historical' pieces, some of which have been specially recreated (these include the first French showing of the paintings Landscape I, II and III, originally featured in the exhibition Contemporary Korean Painting at Tokyo's National Museum of Modern Art in 1968; and a new Installation of cotton and steel created for the Forum of the Centre Pompidou Metz.) The exhibition ends with a meditation room, echoing the meditation cell installed by Lee Ufan as the conclusion of the visitor itinerary at his personal museum in Naoshima, Japan - a space designed to allow visitors to prolong their visit through reflection and recollection.

LEE UFAN. INHABITING TIMEFebruary 27 to September 30, 2019

GALERIE 1

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Complementing and expanding the visitor experience, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto has created a soundtrack that resonates with the essential materials, poetry and philosophy of Lee Ufan's work.

Lee Ufan lives and works chiefly in Paris and Kamakura, Japan. His work has been seen around the world, at institutions including the Hermitage National Museum in St Petersburg, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Palace of Versailles, the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art In Seoul; and at events including the Biennales of Venice (2007, 2011), Gwangju, Korea (2000, 2006), Shanghai (2000), Sydney (1976), São Paulo (1973) and Paris (1971). In 2014 and 2017, his work featured at the Centre Pompidou Metz as part of the themed exhibitions Simple Shapes and Japanorama. New perspectives on contemporary art. Ryuichi Sakamoto appeared in concert at the Centre Pompidou Metz as part of the museum's 10 Evenings accompanying the Japan Season in 2017.

Lee Ufan will shortly open a new foundation in Arles, housed in the Hôtel Vernon, a seventeenth-century building located near the city's Roman arena, remodelled by the artist's friend, architect Tadao Ando.

'In the 1960s, I wanted to settle in the United States,' says Ufan, 'but in the 1970s I found myself in Paris, by chance, where my work and ideas were Influenced by classical art, especially the collections at the Louvre. That was what persuaded me to settle in France.' Why Arles? 'I discovered the city thanks to the publisher Actes Sud, and the launch of a monograph of my work. This Roman city, rich in history, was a catalyst for new ideas and thinking,' he says. 'The Hôtel Vernon is very well located near the ancient arena, at the heart of the ruins of Roman civilisation. The building has been occupied by the same family for several generations: it gave me a strong sense of time. I was inspired by the [potential for] dialogue between my work and the city's fragmented ruins. I wasn't interested in a new building, at all.' Ufan notes what was, for him, a significant detail: 'the seventeenth-century guild carpenters had inscribed dates on the roof beams, thanks to which we know that the main, supporting beam was installed seven years before the death of Louis XIV.' And in 2014, Lee Ufan was the guest artist at Louis XIV's very own the park and palace, in Versailles.

(Interview by Philippe Dagen for Le Monde, February 16, 2018).

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Lee Ufan was born in Korea in 1936, to a family steeped in strict Confucian ideals and morality, part of a community that refused to recognise the Japanese occupation and took a critical view of modernity and progress. He enrolled at art school after initially studying literature and poetry: he was marked as a rebel and eventually denied a place to study literature at university, before enrolling to study fine art in 1956. Personal expression through art, and creative professions, were frowned on in his family circle and community. The Confucian master Dong-cho, whose principles Ufan knew, held that art was a mere distraction. These radical, polarised attitudes were a source of inner conflict. As Ufan explains: 'When I try to live as a Korean, my creative life is impoverished, and if I try to live as an artist, I distance myself from the Korean people.'1 Faced with this dilemma, Ufan sought to strike a balance by approaching artistic practice from the 'opposing', Confucian standpoint, with the aim of creating a universal, non-self-referential language, an art form 'beyond art,' and a kind of 'expressive humility', in which the artist disappears behind his work.

Lee Ufan's departure for Japan, at the end of his first year at university, marked an important stage in the forging of the artist's identity. He went to live with his uncle, studied Japanese from 1957 onwards, and took classes in contemporary philosophy. With no plans to pursue an artistic career, he sold figurative paintings to earn money, and campaigned actively for Korean reunification, a cause to which he remained devoted throughout his young adult life, though his dream - and his political militancy - faded over time. Ufan took refuge in art, and a phenomenological interpretation of human existence inspired by his readings of Western philosophers, especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of perception, and the writings of Heidegger and Foucault.

Traditionally, perception is defined as a function of the intellect - the process by which an individual becomes aware of the objects and characteristics of his or her surroundings, based on information delivered by the senses. In The Structure of Behavior (1942) and The Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Maurice Merleau-Ponty set out to demonstrate that our concept of perception is tainted by a number of prejudices which mask the true nature of things. Focussing on the learning process of the individual consciousness, Merleau-Ponty challenges both 'empiricism', which fails because we cannot search for something about which we know nothing, and 'intellectualism' because, equally, we can only search for something we do not know. In this, Lee Ufan saw a direct echo of his personal quest to renew the language of art.

1 Lee Ufan, Tension précaire, exh. cat., Chapelle Saint-Laurent-Le Capitole, Arles, July 1 to September 22, 2013, Paris: Actes Sud, 2013, p.132

2. LEE UFAN

'I'm hostile to unfettered industrialisation, and mass consumerism, which leads to frenzied productivity. I'm opposed to people who want to shape the world according to their own vision of things. And so, contradictory as it may seem, I create with the ultimate aim of non-creation.' (Lee Ufan)

Lee Ufan et installation avec plaque d'acier, pierre naturelle, 1990

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Phenomenology was central to the birth of the Mono-ha movement in Japan, in 1968, with Lee Ufan as one of its leading theorists and exponents. The 'School of Things' probed the relationships engendered between natural and industrial elements in ephemeral, ascetic installations created with minimal intervention on the part of the artist. Mono-ha forged links between art and philosophy, in a spirit of anti-consumerism. The movement's essential economy of gesture - a critique of hyper-productivity and the 'imagery overload' in contemporary art and society - is a constant feature throughout Lee Ufan's career, including his most recent creations. This stance is the springboard for one of the artist's most important concepts, explored in the show at the Centre Pompidou Metz: non-action, from non-panting to non-sculpture, as a way of welcoming 'the world as it is' into his work.'2 In Eastern philosophy, non-action (the absence of action as an act in itself) and emptiness are far more positively construed than in anthropocentric Western thought.

Lee Ufan combines this philosophy with the vision underpinning Merleau-Ponty's 'philosophy of ambivalence', in which the artist sees echoes of his youth in Korea and Japan.

In the mid-1960s, Lee Ufan produced parallel series of works consisting of materials placed in relation to each other, their surrounding space, and the viewer; and canvases painted with dots and lines. Ever mindful of the context in which his work is displayed, Lee Ufan takes as his starting-point the realisation that a work is never simply an exposition of the artist's ideas; its richness and interest lie in its accompanying, intimate resonance with time and space.3 Each work is less an object to be viewed, than an invitation to experience an emotional engagement with the immediate environment, and to savour the resulting moment.'4

In the late 1960s, Lee Ufan developed his artistic career on three fronts, in Korea, Japan and the West, notably Germany and France, where he exhibited in 1971. As Ufan explains, the Western art world often views his work solely, and reductively, in terms of his Asian origins - a realisation that sparked his interest 'in the potential of the individual and the universal.' Linguistic barriers have also shaped his artistic development - first between Korean and Japanese, and subsequently between these two languages and French, English and German. His canvases are more closely related to writing than to painting, he says, as a way of 'conceiving a world beyond the limitations of languge […] an a-linguistic world.'

Lee Ufan's ideas and actions evolve from one exhibition to another, from one series to the next, shifting with ease from painting to sculpture and installation. The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou Metz offers a portrait of the artist through his work, striving continually to explore the potential of art as a means of apprehending our relationship with the world around us. Lee Ufan's work is an invitation to slow down, step outside the world - with its endless influx of imagery and communication - and focus our attention on perception itself. A meditative pathway that may take as its starting-point a single, insignificant detail, or infinity itself. As Ufan explains: 'It's not that the universe is infinite; it's that infinity is the universe.'

2 Lee Ufan, exh. cat., Musée d’art moderne, Saint-Etienne Métropole, op. cit., p.123 Quoted in Lee Ufan, Ecrits, (French translation from the Japanese, by Anne Gossot), p.34 Lee Ufan, Tension précaire, exh. cat., Chapelle Saint-Laurent - Le Capitole, Arles, July 1 to September 22, 2013, Paris: Actes Sud, 2013, p.198

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3. EXHIBITION ITINERARY

EXITENTER

Room 12

Room 13 Room 15Room 14 Room 1 Room 4 Room 5Room 2

Room 3

Room 7Room 8Room 9Room 10Room 11 Room 6

The exhibition has been devised by the artist and curator as a pathway leading from one experience to the next, like the process of discovery of a new language, beyond the codes and traditional references of contemporary art. At each 'station' along the way, a selection of works embodies a concept, a way of considering art. Some rooms also present these core concepts as explored in a specific material.

Exhibition curator Jean-Marie Gallais explains: 'This is not a retrospective in the conventional sense, more a journey through Lee Ufan's oeuvre and its quest to redefine art. We haven't attempted to survey 'the complete Lee Ufan', nor to offer a chronological approach, but rather to show how Ufan has developed certain principles and concepts over the course of his career. The exhibition covers most of the typologies and materials embraced by Lee Ufan, together with transitional phases and pivotal works that demonstrate how one idea led to another. His work makes palpable the connections between thought, form and physical experience. Works were selected for display in a process of continuous dialogue with the artist, who was particularly attentive to the balance of paintings, sculptures and installations, older and more recent works.' Doubt and questioning are fundamental to Lee Ufan's approach, enabling him to challenge the principles of painting and sculpture, and to move beyond the concept of the individual artistic ego. The works presented at the Centre Pompidou Metz explore this aspect of his work, too, as the expression of Ufan's determination to achieve 'non-painting' and 'non-sculpture' (in his own words), and to establish the purest possible relationship between the inner and outer aspect of a work of art, between energy and stasis, as alternative ways to 'inhabiting time.'

GALLERY 1 LAYOUT

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ROOM 1

DIALOGUE

Lee Ufan, Dialogue, 2010Installation au Musée Lee Ufan à NaoshimaPeinture murale / Espace au sol, 720 x 900 cm 330 cm (hauteur minimum) - 360 cm (hauteur maximum)Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London© Adagp, Paris, 2018

The exhibition opens with a painting executed directly on the wall of a white room. The dabs of paint, 'always similar but always different', dialogue with the non-painted areas around them to generate an atmosphere of tension and equilibrium alike. The work functions as a gateway or portal to the artist's world, his chosen symbol, marking the beginning of a pathway. Paint is freed from the canvas to bring rhythm and movement to a vast, immaculate space. The painted and non-painted areas of the room dialogue with one another. Crushed and ground mineral pigments create nuanced effects of shade, evoking the potential unification or inversion of things and nothingness: brushstrokes may gradually disappear or simply never exist. The viewer is left with the impression of a fleeting moment in time, which may vanish from one instant to the next.

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ROOM 2

RELATUM

Since 1972, Lee Ufan has given all his sculptures the Latin title Relatum. Each piece centres on the juxtaposition of a range of natural and industrial materials, and their resulting relationships. Lee Ufan barely intervenes in these core elements: the primordial, creative act resides in their selection and positioning in space. The artist's non-interventionism highlights each element's intrinsic characteristics, and intensifies their presence in the work, engendering a relationship between the rock - unaltered since time immemorial - and geometric sheets of glass or steel, shaped by man, though both are comprised of natural raw materials. The works' defining relationships - between opacity and transparency, solidity and fragility, nature and industry - intensify as we observe them over time. Lee Ufan does not seek to magnify these oppositions, but to invite the visitor to observe them with heightened attention. The evident non-functionality of the different elements and their arrangement concentrates the viewer's attention still further on the act of looking.

'Seeing, choosing, borrowing or displacing are already a part of the creative act.' (Lee Ufan)

Lee Ufan, Relatum - Existence, 2014Steel, stone, glassSteel plate: 260 x 230 x 2 cmStone: 70 x 60 cmGlass: 260 x 230 cm x 2 cmCourtesy Gary Tatintsian Gallery and Pace Gallery© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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ROOM 3

FROM POINT, FROM LINE

As a child, Lee Ufan learned calligraphy by endlessly repeating the basic elements of notation: the dot and the line. This physical and intellectual memory has suffused his work since the1970s. In 1973 he began to make serial paintings that allowed him to combine Western canvas supports and Eastern materials, mineral pigments and size (rabbit-skin glue), to explore repetition and difference, and to reflect more widely on the question of infinity.

Each painting is the result of a precise ritual: the canvas is laid out on the floor, and the artist must keep his upper body horizontal, parallel with the surface, in order to feel the weight and movement he imparts to the brush, as a direct extension of his physical presence. Hence, for Lee Ufan, the act of painting engages the mind and body as a whole. It is, as he explains, the product of 'concentration and deep, regular breathing, so as to bring about the encounter between the organic forces of the hand, the brush, the colours, the canvas, the air and time itself.'

Like an individual breath, unique but endlessly repeated, each dab or line of paint forms part a rhythmic pattern of appearance and disappearance, endlessly repeatable and generating a remarkable impression of infinity. Lee Ufan makes visible the process by which the material, brush and canvas come together as one. In his series From Point, each stroke of the brush is an irreversible moment in time, a powerful, assertive presence that cannot be masked by Its successor, though the two are plainly connected both to each other, and to the marks that went before, as part of a cyclical exploration of time.

Lee Ufan's sense of time is derived from the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one of the artist's 'thought masters', who saw time not as an object of our knowing, but as a dimension of our being, perceptible only in its passing.

Lee Ufan refuses to countenance the re-painting or re-working of sections of his canvases, thereby upholding a tradition of Japanese painting which maintains that 'the myriad elements that make up a simple brush-stroke can never be reproduced.' In these serial paintings, repetition highlights the conflict between the intellect, with its urge for systematic, organised regularity; the body, which can never wholly satisfy that need; and the material, which ultimately disappears or dries on the brush. The brushstroke is born, develops and disappears, leaving a single trace - like a living being, an organism unfolding in space and time.

'When I was small, I was asked to make dots or trace lines [on a sheet of paper] until the ink ran out. When you draw a line, the colour [loaded onto the brush] disappears little by little. After this initial practice, you move onto painting or calligraphy. And this is exactly how I was taught as a child - I have invented nothing. Also, I had an Idea that everything came from a single point and returned to that point. I was familiar with the concept of appearance and disappearance from childhood. It's a dominant idea in Eastern philosophy.' (Lee Ufan)

Lee Ufan, From Line, 1974Oil on canvas, 181.6 x 227 cmNew York, Musteum of Modern Art (MoMA)© 2018. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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The first paintings in the series From/With Winds were made at the beginning of the 1980s, following what Lee Ufan describes as a 'major inner rupture', and the saturation of the picture space in his work. Line freed itself completely from both the earlier practice of systematic repetition, and the concept of irreversibility. Here, lines and dots each have their own clearly defined identity, though some marks make contact with others, and overlap with varying degrees of impasto. Individual touches no longer appear as vital stages in an evolutionary process from one mark to the next, but as spontaneous responses. The work's creative chronology is no longer discernible to us. Lee Ufan uses curved brush strokes to initiate a dynamic dialogue between the paradoxically architectural yet free-floating marks. The thicker, broader brush loosens the artist's gestures, creating a network of traces that interact like organs of the human body, connected and interdependent.

The use of the word 'wind' reflects Lee Ufan's growing interest in and acceptance of the Other. In nature, the wind comes from elsewhere, 'outside'. It can never be fully controlled. The more Ufan allows himself to be guided by his material, using thicker, more concentrated paint, the more space he afords that sense of externality in his work. For him, the physical reality of the canvas is as important as the materiality of the paint, and his brushwork, so that more and more of the support is left untouched, highlighting the absence of action/intervention and material. Ufan often uses canvases based on the dimensions and scale of the human body: his works exert a powerful physical presence that dialogues with the presence of the viewer.

It is possible to trace the evolution of Lee Ufan’s various serial compositions as a dialectic movement in which the urge for greater freedom follows a quest for order, and ultimately heralds another, more ordered phase. A work like From Winds / Correspondence captures the precise moment of transition between these two stages, opening itself to the space of 'non-action.' Lee Ufan curbs the tendency to improvisation and rapidity of execution. The free paint marks in Winds are almost invisible. They recede into the background in favour of a single, virtually rectangular stroke - Lee Ufan's almost exclusive vocabulary as a painter in later years.

Lee Ufan, East Winds n° 839027, 1983Huile sur toile, 194 x 259 cmCentre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d’art moderne© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Service de la documentation photographique du MNAM/Dist. RMN-GP© Adagp, Paris, 2018

'Up until the early 1980s, I worked continually on serial compositions which were all developments on the idea of infinity. As I worked on them, I realised that the support left untouched was a better representation of infinity. Since then, each stroke of my brush has gradually freed itself from my control in order to breathe deeply in space and attain a higher existence of its own.' (Lee Ufan)

FROM/WITH WINDS, EAST WINDS

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ROOM 4 AND 5

RELATUM (FORMERLY PHENOMENON AND PERCEPTION A)

This Relatum, previously entitled 'Phenomenon and Perception A' in reference to the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is one of Lee Ufan's very first sculptures, reflecting his early fascination with the disconnect between perception and reality. The rubber tape measure used here by the artist is stripped of its original function by being stretched and elongated under the weight of the stones, so that its measurements are false. The measurements lose their definitive, objective character, and the tape measure's fundamental raison d'être is challenged, together with the viewer's faculties of perception: we can no longer trust what we see. Here, the tape measure's sole purpose is to make visible the 'strength' of the rocks, and the essential property of the material from which it is made, namely rubber.

This Relatum is characteristic of the work produced during Lee Ufan's Mono-ha period and reveals the artist's dawning interest in the creation of simple encounters between natural and manufactured materials, and the resulting dialogue of their essential characteristics: the hardness and stasis of stone, the flexibility and elasticity of rubber, the weight of one and the lightness of the other, but also the robust physicality of both elements.

'Are space and objects truly as we see them? […] I observe the weight of a stone, its disposition, and the impression of its distance from another stone, through the elasticity and subjectivity of a tape measure. I arrange the Relatum, which highlights the precise characteristics of these elements. In so doing, the space of the relationship, opened up through the destruction of everyday assumptions, encourages a new way of looking at perception itself.' (Lee Ufan)

Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Phenomena and Perception A), 1969Chalk on rubber and stones3 stones, approximately 50 cm high each; rubber tape and overall dimensions vary with installationPrivate collectionInstallation view: Trends in Contemporary Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, August 19-September 23, 1969Credit: Studio Lee Ufan© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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ROOM 6

LANDSCAPE I, II AND III

Lee Ufan showed these three remarkable, brightly coloured paintings at his first major group exhibition in Japan, in 1968 (a survey of contemporary Korean art at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo). The works were created at a time when Ufan's focus shifted from materiality and gesture, to optical effects. The pictures' dazzling brightness came as a surprise to many. Lee Ufan eclipsed the surrounding works in the original show: his red, orange and pink surfaces were reflected in and activated their immediate surroundings. Despite the title's mischievous allusion to 'landscapes', these are not figurative representations of reality. Instead, the canvases highlight the ways in which our perception of a work of art is influenced by its prevailing conditions. The phosphorescent colours reinforce this sense of distance from reality. The pictures should be considered in the context of Op Art, the movement sweeping the European and American art scenes of the day. These sensual, immersive paintings are closer to installation than to traditional picture-making. The 'landscape' in question is created all around the three canvases, in the context of the exhibition itself. All three original canvases were lost when the exhibition was taken down in 1968. Lee Ufan re-enacted them in 2015.

Lee Ufan, Landscape I, II, III, 1968Spray paint on canvasThree sheets, 220 x 290 cm eachInstallation view: Contemporary Korean Painting, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, July 19–September 1, 1968Credit: Studio Lee Ufan© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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ROOM 7 (AND FORUM FROM FEBRUARY TO APRIL 2019)

RELATUM (COTTON)

Lee Ufan made frequent use of cotton early in his career, in the late 1960s, when he was connected with Japan's Mono-ha movement, as one of its principal theorists. Cotton was most often combined with sheet steel, in a spectacular play of contrasts. Cotton and steel are both natural materials, yet they are appear different in every way: cotton Is white, lightweight, soft, yielding. It seems to cosset the dark, constraining, man-made metal sheets. Cotton is used again in the temporary installation for the Forum of the Centre Pompidou Metz (February to April 2019): here, pliable metal rods form floating designs in the space of the cotton. The work appears to shift and evolve, as if the cotton might spread and reach up to the roof beams of the Centre Pompidou Metz - designed by Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines - a building which is itself defined by the interplay of contrasting natural and re-worked materials. Or do the metal fragments seek to structure and contain the ethereal mass of cotton wool? These contradictory impressions of movement and stasis are both soothing and disturbing.

Lee Ufan, Relatum, 1979Cotton and steelApproximately 20 x 500 x 350 cmInstallation view: Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo, April 1979Credit: Studio Lee Ufan© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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ROOM 8

CORRESPONDANCE

Correspondence is a serial painting initiated at the beginning of the 1990s, as an extension of Lee Ufan's earlier exploration of presence and absence. Each mark on the canvases in the series is made up of successive layers of paint applied over several days, often without waiting for the previous layer to dry, as if all the marks in the From Point series were collected here into one. This simple gesture conveys a sense of the moment of profound concentration that Lee Ufan brings to each his paintings. The brush stroke is both the product of lengthy reflection, and a symbol of flagrant inactivity, embodying the very least gesture a painter can make. And yet this economy of gesture introduces an intense dialogue between the painted mark and the canvas - the untouched 'reserve' of space around the mark. It allows the bare canvas to enjoy equal status with the painted mark itself.

In the Correspondences, the measured brush strokes become fewer and fewer, forming harmonious if irregular ensembles. Lee Ufan often uses a traditional support borrowed from Japanese and Korean art: the folding screen. Here, touches of paint are applied in a way that suggests a quest for absolute 'sufficiency', even (on one of the panels) to the extent of choosing to make no marks at all. Lee Ufan makes increasingly deliberate use of 'non-painting', elevating the untouched surface to a status even higher than it enjoys in traditional Eastern painting, while at the same time conferring a new contemporaneity on the traditional folding screen.

'I concentrate on the regular control of my breathing, and my physical sense of that rhythm, and then I place the first brush stroke somewhere on the canvas. From there, the urge to displace the brush to another part of the canvas comes of its own accord, seemingly in relation to the first mark. And then, in the same way, the brush is called to another place. Little by little, exactly as in a game of Go, a tensile scenario develops.' (Lee Ufan)

Lee Ufan (1936 - ) Correspondance 1994 Huile et pigment sur toile260 x 774 cmInscriptions :S.T.B.G. à la peinture jaune sur le premier panneau du quadriptyque : Lee Ufan/CorrespondanceQuadriptyqueAchat, 1996Numéro d'inventaire : AM 1994-138 © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Claude Planchet© Adagp, Paris

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ROOM 9 AND 10

RELATUM-DIALOGUE (STONE AND STEEL)

When Lee Ufan makes sculptures, he feels no pressure to create comething new, nor to 'objectify the world' in accordance with the Western modern artistic paradigm. Instead, he seeks to compose a relationship between things which already exist. In this way, the underlying concept of Relatum remains more open and wide-ranging than the closed definition implied when considering ‘one thing in relation to another.’ This allows Lee Ufan to continually update his pieces depending on his chosen materials, and their setting: he refuses to think of his works as ‘one-offs’, preferring a more ephemeral vision. Gradually, with each new staging of Relatum, Lee Ufan introduces more space between the elements. The artist challenges himself to 'conjure as many correspondences as possible, with minimal contact.'

Sheet steel and stone are the two most frequently recurring elements in Lee Ufan’s sculptures. Both are extremely hard-wearing, and generate multiple contrasts between their colour, form, origins and essential nature. The stone represents that which is ‘already in existence’: beyond its removal from its place of origin to the display space, it is unaltered. The chosen stone must be quite ordinary in appearance, with no exceptional characteristics, and offering no hint of a narrative or referential interpretation. Rather, it should communicate a sense of its own continual evolution over centuries, even millennia, as an assertion of its ‘abstractive power’. For Lee Ufan, the sheet of steel represents an intermediary stage between matter and the intellect, as an element drawn from the bowels of the Earth but manufactured and standardised by man.

The stone is irregular in shape, but the sheet steel has a recognisable, geometric form. The stone is synonymous with ancient, telluric energies, while steel represents recently evolved technical know-how. The natural material is immediately palpable, while the metal has no inherent existence of its own without the intervention of man. Each is a similarly inert material-in-waiting. Placed face-to-face or one on top of the other, the metal seeks to revert to its past, natural state. And the stone is awakened : it needs the sheet steel to reveal its 'character and its presence'. Confronted with the metal in sheet form – 'as an intermediary between the stone and mankind,' it discovers its own usefulness to the human race.

Lee Ufan, Relatum - Dialogue, 2002Steel and stone, 2 steel plates, 120 x 140 x 3 cm each; 2 stones, 50 x 50 x 40 cm eachPhoto by Shigeo Anzai© Adagp, Paris, 2018

'Generally, the act of moving a stone from its place of origin to the exhibition space causes it to lose its power – it becomes a shrunken ‘being’. Because it has a relationship with its environment. The displacement removes its living aspect. The same is true of the sheets of steel when I receive them from the factory. When I stand them up, or lie them down, or reposition them, I feel I’m consoling them. In this work, I try to find the ideal distance between them, and in relation to the setting. Little by little, in the small corner occupied by the stone and the sheet of steel, life returns and a living, breathing space opens. And then, all of a sudden, we feel as if they have been there forever.' (Lee Ufan)

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ROOM 11

EXCAVATED PAINTINGS

Lee Ufan's sculptures focus attention on the floor rather than the wall. Taking this reflection further, Ufan examines whether painting, too, can be conceived and observed in relation to the floor rather than the wall? 'I thought about how I could give greater value to the space of the floor, and eventually I took as my starting-point the concept of an archaeological dig. This enabled me to embrace the space of the floor and invite the viewer to go back in space and time.' Two materials make their first appearance in Ufan's work here: sand and gravel, presented as alternative states of stone. Like a kind of indoor garden, this poetic space features a painting executed directly on the floor, as an introduction to the more recent Dialogue series, in the next room. Lee Ufan explains: 'The picture […] is like a shadow. We don't know if it's in the process of appearing or disappearing. And so, I chose an ambivalent picture, both emergent and evanescent, with which to transform this place into a space where the past, present and future come together.'

Lee Ufan, La peinture ensevelie..., 2013Installation : sable, pierre, huile et pigments minéraux sur toile Dimensions variables Vue de l’exposition « Lee Ufan », kamel mennour (6 rue du Pont de Lodi), ParisPhoto. archives kamel mennourCourtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris/London© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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ROOM 12

DIALOGUE (RECENT PAINTINGS)

Since 2007, Lee Ufan's paintings have been entitled Dialogue. His brush strokes have evolved since the Correspondences, and colour has re-appeared. Two colours - red and blue - fuse and fade, and their meaning is clearest when the viewer steps back from the painting and sees the emerging dialogue between the painted and non-painted elements. The canvas seems either to reject the coloured marks, or to absorb them. The void - silence, and time, which we inhabit - is central to Lee Ufan's thinking: for him, each canvas is devoid of emptiness until his long, powerful, irreversible touch of paint is applied and 'activates' its surrounding space. The Dialogue series demonstrates Lee Ufan's fascination with the immaterial and the sublime, and invites the viewer, once again, to join in an act of meditation.

Lee UfanPhoto. archives kamel mennour

'Infinity is not the repetition of a single concept but the combination of the painted and the un-painted. It occurred to me that infinity emerges from within that type of disconnect.' (Lee Ufan)

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ROOM 13

DRAWINGS

This 'cabinet of drawings' presents a selection of graphic works by Lee Ufan from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne. Demonstrating multiple ways to inhabit and activate the surface of the white sheet of paper, these early drawings hint at Lee Ufan's future artistic vocabulary: their repeated dots and lines seek the perfect balance between the mark and the empty space of the page. The marks themselves are often more demonstrative, more expressive than those in the serial paintings. Already, they show a rich range of compositional forms and a virtuosic mastery of multiple dots and lines that focuses our attention on the nature of the repeated gesture.

This 'cabinet' was created by the artist as a tribute to Dominique Bozo (1935-1993), director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne from 1981 to 1986, president of the Centre Pompidou from 1991 to 1993, and a close friend of Lee Ufan, who acquired most of the works seen here for the French national collection.

Lee Ufan, From line, 1979Graphite gras sur feuille de carnet à spirales, 37,6 x 28 cmCentre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d’art moderne© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, From line, 1979Crayon gras sur papier Japonais mo, avec effet d’estompage, 56 x 75,6 cmCentre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d’art moderne© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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ROOM 14

RELATUM (SHADOW)

Typifying Lee Ufan's continuous, subtle renewal of his artistic vocabulary, this installation disrupts the viewer's perception of light by doubling the shadow projected by the stone on the floor, with a painted shadow. The rock stands as a silent force, activating the space around it, and seemingly frozen in time: the two shadows seemingly capture two distinct moments in the day, when the stone caught the light of the sun.

Lee Ufan, Relatum - The Shadow of the Stars, 2014Steel, 7 stones and gravel of white marble, 200 x 4500 x 4000 cmView of the exhibition “Lee Ufan Versailles”, Château de Versailles, 2014Photo. archives Kamel Mennour Courtesy the artist, Kamel Mennour, Paris/London and Pace, New York© Adagp, Paris, 2018

'Each work is less an object to be viewed, than an invitation to experience an emotional engagement with the immediate environment, and to savour the resulting moment.' (Lee Ufan)

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ROOM 15

MEDITATION ROOM

The rice paper meditation room (the same Japanese paper that inspires architect Shigeru Ban) is reminiscent of traditional Japanese rooms set aside for the tea ceremony. The small, intimate, minimalist, silent space is an invitation to meditate at the end of the exhibition. It stands as an antidote to the modern spaces all around and shows how more timeless spaces can be created. The visitor walks on a bed of gravel, and stones are present, as in a Zen garden.

The natural, organic pattern of rice paper - brought from Asia by Lee Ufan - echoes the regular, orthogonal pattern of the structure's metallic grille to poetic, graphic effect. The space functions as a kind of decompression chamber, bringing the spiritual and aesthetic journey of the exhibition to a close, before we return to the everyday world.

CATALOGUE

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, featuring a previously unpublished interview between Lee Ufan and the exhibition curator Jean-Marie Gallais, together with quotations and writings by the artist. In accordance with Lee Ufan's wishes, the catalogue will be published a few weeks after the exhibition opening, in order to photograph the works in the context of their presentation at the Centre Pompidou Metz.

Lee Ufan, Relatum-Room (B), Couvent de La Tourette, 2017Pierre, bois, inox et papier de riz de Corée, 476 x 406 cm© Photo Jean-Philippe Simard© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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4. AN EXCEPTIONNAL COLLABORATION

WITH RYUICHI SAKAMOTOWorks, performances and installations by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto explore the characteristic sounds and acoustic properties of raw materials such as glass and metal. Pioneered by a generation of musicians influenced by the Mono-ha movement, this return to the simplicity and materiality of sound parallels the interactions between man and nature, space and matter, explored by the movement's visual artists, in particular Lee Ufan.

When Ryuichi Sakamoto heard that the Centre Pompidou Metz was preparing an exhibition dedicated to the work of Lee Ufan, he contacted the artist straightaway to offer an accompaniment to the works on display: a new pendant in sound. Working closely with the intrinsic sounds of his natural raw materials, Ryuichi Sakamoto dialogues with Lee Ufan's oeuvre and 'inhabits time' in his own way, with a sound installation conceived as a continuous accompaniment to the exhibition, and a synaesthetic experience for the viewer.

RYUICHI SAKAMOTORyuichi Sakamoto (b. 1952) studied art and ethnomusicology and made his début with the solo album Thousand Rivers in 1978, the year in which he co-founded the pioneering electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO, 1978-1985). He is associated with avant-garde art movements, especially Fluxus, and collaborated extensively with Nam June Paik. Ryuichi Sakamoto creates hybrid scores, using sampled sounds. His work eschews formal hierarchies in favour of free experimentation across all genres, with a particular interest in synaesthesia. Ryuichi Sakamoto is widely known for his film scores including Furyo (1983), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987) and other films by the same director, together with Brian de Palma, Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro González Iñárritu. He has long been interested in more experimental musical forms and the possibilities of combined audio and visual technology in installations, performance, recordings and collaborations with contemporary artists. His new album async (2017) marks a return to experimental hybrid forms: piano, synthesizers, electronic beatboxes, carillons by designer Harry Bertoia, and a new instrument - a glass panel with integral microphones. Sakamoto uses sound and imagery as vectors for our macroscopic relationship with nature: an experimental approach with close connections to the work of Lee Ufan, and the springboard for his original 'soundtrack' accompanying the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

Ryuichi Sakamoto dans la performance DIS•PLAY, avec Shiro Takatani au Centre Pompidou-Metz le 4 mars 2018, dans le cadre des 10Evenings, Saison Japonaise. Photographie Jacqueline Trichard

Ryuichi Sakamoto dans la performance DIS•PLAY, avec Shiro Takatani au Centre Pompidou-Metz le 4 mars 2018, dans le cadre des 10Evenings, Saison Japonaise. Photographie Jacqueline Trichard

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5. FOUR QUESTIONS

FOR THE EXHIBITION CURATORCentre Pompidou Metz - What prompted you to invite Lee Ufan to the Centre Pompidou Metz?

Jean-Marie Gallais - In 2017, the Centre Pompidou Metz devoted a season of events to the contemporary art scene In Japan. Lee Ufan came to Metz to install one of his sculptures for the occasion. As a friend of Shigeru Ban, he was immediately fascinated by the museum's architecture, especially the use of simple materials such as a wood and card, and the white fabric inspired by rice paper. The museum's director Emma Lavigne and I suggested he create an installation for the Forum, engaging with Shigeru Ban's architecture, or intervene in one of our galleries, like his Korean and Japanese compatriots Kimm SooJa (in 2015) and Tadashi Kawamata (in 2016). But the more we talked, the more we became convinced that a larger, more 'historical' exhibition was necessary: Lee Ufan's work is subtle and demanding in its simplicity. It's easy to pass it by. He has staged shows which have attracted considerable media attention, like his superb carte blanche at Versailles, but large, more experimental sections of his oeuvre are still relatively little known. His 'signature' style will be familiar to some viewers, but not necessarily in relation to the themes and issues his explores in his work as a whole. And so, we began to develop an itinerary, in collaboration with the artist, which would bring his practice and his definition of art itself to a much wider audience.

CPM - Describe the exhibition highlights?

JMG - It's difficult to single out specific pieces because Lee Ufan's work eschews hierarchies of form. A simple work on paper may be every bit as powerful as a monumental installation. I think some of the most striking moments in the exhibition are the recreations of historical works, in particular one of the iconic Relatum series from the late 1960s, when Lee Ufan was involved with the Mono-ha movement: stones in space, whose weight and juxtaposition stretch the measurements on a rubber tape measure extended between them. Marcel Duchamps's Stoppages étalons revisited à la Lee Ufan! The three pink, red and orange paintings first seen in Japan in 1968 are also quite remarkable, and very unlike what we have come to expect from Ufan: he hasn't always worked with an ascetic, mineral palette. No two visitors will be struck by the same piece of work, I feel sure - depending on what they already know of Ufan's work, or their personal sensibilities.

Séance de travail entre Lee Ufan et Jean-Marie Gallais, dans l'exposition Fernand Léger au Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2017

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CPM - Could you tell us a little about the scenography?

JMG - If you look closely, you'll see that the thickness of the partition walls varies from one room to the next, for example. Lee Ufan wanted to introduce gravel pathways, like those in Japanese gardens. He paid close attention to the position of the openings leading from one space to the next, and to the dimensions of the walls. In fact, the catalogue will be published several weeks after the opening, giving us time to photograph the works in situ - this was hugely important for Lee Ufan. The experience of an individual work can be radically different depending on the context in which it is displayed, from one exhibition to the next.

CPM - The exhibition is accompanied by a soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto: isn't this contrary to the meditative approach advocated by Lee Ufan, which is perhaps better suited to silence?

JMG - Yes, as a rule, Lee Ufan's exhibitions are silent. The works impose a kind of silence of their own. But that's another convention we can challenge! The voids in the paintings, and the empty 'space between' in the sculptures, may be interpreted as a form of silence, but Lee Ufan has already used sound in his exhibitions. And he sometimes works with music. His artistic practice is directly relatable to musical practice: repetition and variation are hugely important. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Lee Ufan have long admired each other's work, and their meeting at the Centre Pompidou Metz for our Japan Season last year was the starting point for their present collaboration. Ryuichi Sakamoto has been experimenting for some time now with sound equivalents for Mono-ha principles in his performances.

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6. EVENTS FOR SCHOOLS AND YOUNG VISITORS / ASSOCIATED EVENTS

YOUTH WORKSHOPSFROM TIME TO TIMEWORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN AGED 5-12CAROLINA FONSECA02.03 > 16.06SAT. + SUN. + PUBLIC HOLIDAYS (exc. May 1)5-7 years | 11:00 a.m.8-12 years | 3:00 p.m90’ | 5€Register online or at the museum (subject to availability).Additional workshops during the school holidays in France's 'Zone B': 5-7 years: WED. | 3:00 p.m.8-12 years: MON. + THU. + FRI. | 3:00 p.m.

Marking your height at each birthday with a mark on the wall, counting the rings in a tree trunk - these small childhood rituals that allow us to visualise the passage of time, are central to the work of Colombian artist Carolina Fonseca.

Inspired by Lee Ufan's oeuvre, Carolina Fonseca invites our youngest visitors to engage with time itself in a workshop that combines painting and sculpture. Children turn back the pace of modern life and practice simple gestures to rediscover how to measure time, and 'take their time'.

The workshop is also an opportunity for small children to begin exploring each individual's place in the world, on a variety of scales, whether in their own home, at school, or in the wider environment of the natural world. By taking the time to experience the essence of a gesture, appreciate the simple touch of a brush on paper, observe a drop of paint as it falls into a sheet, children discover new ways of looking at the world.

In the middle of the workshop space, the artist's 'colour clock' Is filled at the beginning of each session by the children themselves, using a precisely

calculated mixture of water and pigment. As in a clepsydra or water clock, the amount of liquid poured in corresponds to the duration of the workshop. After 90 minutes, the mixture will run out. The clock takes the form of a large bowl carved by the artist - part of her ongoing exploration of the

De temps en temps, 2019Centre Pompidou-Metz, Carolina Fonseca. © Centre Pompidou-Metz

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symbolism of everyday objects. Bowls play a central role in the ancient ritual of Yagé y temazcal practised by indigenous peoples in Colombia. It's also a familiar everyday object, and a universal form common to all cultures. A shared breakfast is a ritual to Fonseca, who is fascinated by shared moments and experiences.

Shelves arranged around the room will hold objects sculpted by the artist, but also small clocks made by the children.

Over the course of the workshop, children will be guided through making their own water-clock in quick-drying clay (no firing is needed). They will paint the sides with water-based paint and can choose to take the clock home with them or add it to the collection created by the artist.

Born in Cali, Colombia in 1987, Carolina Fonseca studied at the École Supérieure d'Art de Lorraine, near the Centre Pomidou Metz, and explores everyday practices in her work: the context in which they emerge, and how they shape cultural customs and community life. Her artistic vocabulary Is nourished by the aesthetic of everyday, old-fashioned objects: so-called insignificant things. She uses inexpensive, fragile, recycled materials. Her aesthetic interests have naturally led her to explore volume and installation, gestures and actions in her practice: moulding, weaving, assemblage. These, often meditative, activities acquire greater significance over time, and stand as an alternative to contemporary society with Its focus on productivity, acceleration, industrialisation.

FAMILY WORKSHOP WITH THE ARTISTSUN. 03.03 | 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m90’ | 5€ (per participant, children and adults + museum ticket for the over-25s, free for PASS-M holders)

Artist Caroline Fonseca presents her opening workshop, inviting children and their accompanying adults to discover her poetic, meditative world, and to experience a different relationship to time, echoing the work of artist Lee Ufan.

IMPRINTS, FAMILY WORKSHOPSUN. 31.03 + SUN. 28.04 + SUN. 26.05 | 2 p.m.120’ | 5€ (per participant, children and adults + museum ticket for the over-25s, free for PASS-M holders)

Touching stones, gathering leaves, choosing pigments… Following in the footsteps of artist Lee Ufan, participants embark on a poetic family journey over the course of a two-hour workshop. After visiting the exhibition Lee Ufan. Inhabiting time and collecting leaves and plants in the gardens of the Centre Pompidou Metz, participants will work with clay and create a sculptural object to take home, as a souvenir of this 'time out'.

NEGATIVE SCULPTURE (course)10.04 > 12.043 DAYS | 10:00 a.m. > 11:30 a.m.3 x 90’ | 15€ (Single tariff for three sessions)

Carolina Fonseca offers children the chance to discover the 'lost mould' sculpture technique and create a sculptural object. After studying the different possibilities, they will take home a 3D object inspired directly by their own imagination.

Patrons of the 5-12 year old workshops :

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SUSPENDED MOMENTS

MEDITATION SESSIONS IN THE PRESENCE OF ARTWORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

SUN. 28.04 + SUN. 05.05 + SUN. 12.05 | 10:3060' | 5€

The Centre Pompidou Metz offers visitors an Introduction to the practice of meditation, with expert guidance, in the presence of artworks by Lee Ufan, outside the exhibition's opening hours. Lee Ufan's art is an open invitation to step back from the pace of everyday life and refocus on simple, sensory phenomena. One of the artist's first gestures at the beginning of his career, in the 1960s, was to retreat from the world of imagery and figuration so that his works, paintings, sculptures and installations could become supports for reflection and encourage the viewer to develop their mindful attention to details of space and emptiness, materials, the body and the relationship between each of these elements. Similarly, the practice of meditation sets us apart from the aggressive demands of urban life. In the context of the exhibition, in the presence of works by Lee Ufan - each an invitation to focus our attention on the world around us - this meditative practice, open and accessible to all, is offered in the morning, before the museum opens its doors to the public. The sessions will include readings of poetic and philosophical texts written by Lee Ufan. The exhibition's title, 'Inhabiting time' may offer a starting point and guiding theme for these moments 'suspended in time'.

Consult the Centre Pompidou-Metz Web site for dates and times.

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7. THE PARTNERS

Centre Pompidou-Metz is the first example of devolution of a major national cultural institution, Centre Pompidou, in partnership with local and regional authorities. As an autonomous institution, Centre Pompidou-Metz benefits from the experience, know-how and international renown of Centre Pompidou. It shares with its elder the values of innovation, generosity, a pluridisciplinary approach as well as an openness to all visitors.

Centre Pompidou-Metz puts on temporary exhibitions based on loans from the collection of Centre Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art, which, with more than 120.000 artworks, is the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe and the second largest in the world. The loans come as well from numerous other French and international museums, galleries and private collectors.

It also develops partnerships with museums around the world. As an extension to its exhibitions, Centre Pompidou-Metz offers dance performances, concerts, cinema and lectures.

It is supported by Wendel, its founding sponsor.

The exhibition Lee Ufan. Inhabiting time has been conceived by Centre Pompidou-Metz and co-produced with kamel mennour gallery. With the exceptionnal support of the Paradise Cultural Foundation based in South Korea.

With the participation of Vranken-Pommery Monopole.

In media partnership with :

Mécène fondateur

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WENDEL, FOUNDING SPONSOR OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ

Wendel has been involved with the Centre Pompidou-Metz since its opening in 2010. Trough this patronage, Wendel has wanted to support an emblematic institution with a broad cultural influence. In acknowledgement of its long-standing commitment to cultural development, Wendel was awarded the title of “Grand Sponsor of Culture” in 2012.

Wendel is one of Europe’s leading listed investment companies. It operates as a long-term investor and requires a commitment from shareholder which fosters trust, constant attention to innovation, sustainable development and promising diversification opportunities. Wendel excels in the selection of leading companies, such as those in which it currently owns a stake: Bureau Veritas, Saint-Gobain, IHS, Constantia Flexibles, Allied Universal, Cromology, Stahl, Tsebo, or PlaYce.

Founded in 1704 in the Lorraine region, the Wendel Group expanded for 270 years in various activities, in particular in the steel industry, before becoming a long-term investor in the late 1970s.

The Group is supported by its core family shareholder group, which is composed of more than one thousand shareholders of the Wendel family, combined to form the family company Wendel-Participations, which owns 37.6% of the Wendel group’s share capital.

CONTACTS

Christine Anglade Pirzadeh : + 33 (0) 1 42 85 63 24 [email protected] Caroline Decaux : + 33 (0) 1 42 85 91 27 [email protected]

G R A N D M E C E N E D E L A C U LT U R E

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FOSTERING ART, SHARING CULTURE AND IMPROVING QUALITY OF LIFE

Paradise Cultural Foundation is actively engaged in the support of various sectors and genres, the range of which broadens each year to encompass sponsorship of not only cultural venues including that of exhibitions, performances, and residencies, but also the project of discovering and promoting nonverbal visual show contents.

The Foundation has also consistently nurtured, in great scale, a series of international exchange projects. Paradise Culture Foundation will continue to explore new and creative ideas, and deliver world-class contents across genres.

Development and enrichment of Korean culture are what Paradise Cultural Foundation seeks in such support of the arts, its ultimate goal being a contribution to enhancing the quality of life. As such, we will continue to realize Paradise Group’s vision to 'Design Life as Art.'

CONTACTS

Paradise Cultural Foundation +82 2 2278 9854 [email protected]

www.paradise-cf.or.kr Instagram @Paradise_cultural_foundation

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8. PRESS IMAGES

The pictures of artworks, among which the pictures listed hereafter, can be downloaded at the following url:

centrepompidou-metz.fr/photothequeUSERNAME: presse

PASSWORD: Pomp1d57

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Lee Ufan, From Point, 1976Colle et pigment minéral sur toile, 227 x 182 cm© Studio Lee UfanCourtesy the artist and Kamel Mennour, Paris/London© ADAGP Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, East Winds n° 839027, 1983Huile sur toile, 194 x 259 cmCentre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d’art moderne© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Service de la documentation photographique du MNAM/Dist. RMN-GP© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, Relatum (formerly Phenomena and Perception A), 1969Chalk on rubber and stones3 stones, approximately 50 cm high each; rubber tape and overall dimensions vary with installationPrivate collectionInstallation view: Trends in Contemporary Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, August 19-September 23, 1969Credit: Studio Lee Ufan© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, Relatum, 1979Cotton and steelApproximately 20 x 500 x 350 cmInstallation view: Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo, April 1979

Peinture à l’eau sur les pierres, 1998, Vallée Hakone© Atelier Lee Ufan et tous droits réservés

Lee Ufan, From Line, 1974Oil on canvas, 181.6 x 227 cmNew York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)© 2018. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan Dialogue 2010Installation au Musée Lee Ufan à NaoshimaPeinture murale / Espace au sol720 x 900 cm330 cm (hauteur minimum) - 360 cm (hauteur maximum) © Lee UfanCourtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris

Lee Ufan Relatum - Existence, 2014Steel, stone, glassSteel plate: 260 x 230 x 2 cmStone: 70 x 60 cmGlass: 260 x 230 cm x 2 cmCourtesy Gary Tatintsian Gallery and Pace Gallery© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, Landscape I, Landscape II, Landscape III, 1968Photo by Nobutada OmoteCourtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE© ADAGP Paris, 2018

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Lee Ufan, From line, 1979Crayon gras sur papier Japonais mo, avec effet d’estompage, 56 x 75,6 cmCentre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d’art moderne© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, La peinture ensevelie..., 2013Installation : sable, pierre, huile et pigments minéraux sur toile Dimensions variables Vue de l’exposition « Lee Ufan », kamel mennour (6 rue du Pont de Lodi), ParisPhoto. archives kamel mennourCourtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, Relatum - Dialogue, 2002Steel and stone, 2 steel plates, 120 x 140 x 3 cm each; 2 stones, 50 x 50 x 40 cm eachPhoto by Shigeo Anzai© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, Relatum - The Shadow of the Stars, 2014Steel, 7 stones and gravel of white marble, 200 x 4500 x 4000 cmView of the exhibition “Lee Ufan Versailles”, Château de Versailles, 2014Photo. archives kamel mennour Courtesy the artist, kamel mennour, Paris/London and Pace, New York© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan, From line, 1979Graphite gras sur feuille de carnet à spirales, 37,6 x 28 cmCentre Pompidou, Paris - Musée national d’art moderne© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP© Adagp, Paris, 2018

Lee Ufan (1936 - ) Correspondance1994 Huile et pigment sur toile260 x 774 cmInscriptions :S.T.B.G. à la peinture jaune sur le premier panneau du quadriptyque : Lee Ufan/CorrespondanceQuadriptyqueAchat, 1996Numéro d'inventaire : AM 1994-138 © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Claude Planchet© Adagp, Paris

Lee Ufan, Relatum-Room (B), Couvent de La Tourette, 2017Pierre, bois, inox et papier de riz de Corée, 476 x 406 cm© Photo Jean-Philippe Simard© Adagp, Paris, 2018

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NOTES

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NOTES

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NOTES

PRESS CONTACTSAGENCE CLAUDINE COLIN

National and International press

Pénélope Ponchelet

Téléphone : + 33 (0)1 42 72 60 01

[email protected]

CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ

Regional press

[email protected]

centrepompidou-metz.fr #leeufan · complementing and expanding the visitor experience, composer...

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