About Lee
Lee Ufan (b. 1936) is a Korean-born, Japan-based artist who played a key role in shaping contemporary art in Japan. A founding member of the Mono-ha (Object School) movement, Lee’s work highlights the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and the spaces they inhabit, employing emptiness to evoke both harmony and tension between them. He is equally respected for his influential academic and theoretical work.
Major Exhibitions
Lee has exhibited widely throughout his prolific career. Most notably, his work was subject to a major retrospective titled Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York in 2011, the artist’s first major North American retrospective. His work has also been exhibited in landmark solo exhibitions such as an installation at the Rijksmuseum Gardens in Amesterdam in 2024; Lee Ufan: Open Dimension at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. in 2019; Relatum-Stage at the Serpentine Galleries in London in 2018; an installation at Chateau de Versailles in 2014; The Art of Margins at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2005; and at the Samsung Museum of Modern Art in 2003, among numerous others. In 2010, the Lee Ufan Museum, dedicated to the artist’s oeuvre, opened on the Japanese island of Naoshima.
Collections
Lee’s works are part of numerous prestigious institutional collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Kunsthaus Zurich; and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul.