Lee Ufan & Hiroshi Sugimoto – Correlation

February 01, 2018 - April 30, 2018

 

Yoshii Gallery is pleased to present Correlation, a group show displaying works by renowned artists Lee Ufan and Hiroshi Sugimoto. This selection of works illustrate the artists’ approach to nature through minimal and organic styles.

 

Lee Ufan, Correspondance, 2003, Oil on canvas (triptych),

Each panel 76 1/4 x 51 3/16 inches (194 x 130cm), Overall 76 1/4 x 153 1/2 inches (194 x 390cm)

 

Lee Ufan (b. 1936) is a South Korean minimalist painter, sculptor and academic. The artist is based in Japan, where he has contributed enormously to the development of Japanese contemporary art. This triptych is part of the series Correspondance which he begain 1991. This series shows Lee’s increased interest in blank backgrounds that explore the theme of infinity. Here three gray brushstrokes, made of a mixture of oil paint and stone pigment, are applied onto a white surface. Lee Ufan describes the creation of his Correspondance paintings by “Using my hand, a brush, and pigment, I face the canvas on the floor. I hold my breath and slowly lay down one stroke. The energetic gray touch of the brush and the taut, white field stimulate each other, producing vibrations in the surrounding air. The space of the painting is opened up by the correspondence between painting and non-painting.”

 

 

 

 

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tyrrhenian Sea, Mount Polo (Morning, day, night), 1993, Gelatin silver print (triptych),

Each image 16 7/8 x 21 1/4 inches, Overall 26 1/4 x 99 3/4 inches (66.7 x 253.4cm)

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948) is a Japanese photographer and architect. In the decades of the 1980s, he began working on a series of photographs of the sea, known as Seascapes, which are taken in different parts of the world using a large format camera. In this triptych from 1993, the same seascape is photographed at different times of the day. The viewer cannot differentiate between water and sky, the only changing element here is the light that transport viewers back to a time that precedes the existence of sea and sky, when all that existed was light: the beginning. Moreover, as a triptych (the only one from the Seascape series), it reinforces the idea of the passage of time.