LEE Ufan is a world-renowned master of contemporary art who led the Mono-ha movement and forged a profound synthesis of Eastern philosophy and Western modern art. Across sculpture, painting, and printmaking alike, he has consistently questioned the boundary between making (to draw, to create) and not making (not to draw, not to create).
When one unravels the world of Lee Ufan’s prints, it becomes clear that it is a rigorous field of spiritual discipline in which the active act of “making” is reduced to an absolute minimum, allowing the material itself to speak and enabling the subtle tremor of ma—the space in between—to be perceived. In the lithographs and drypoints to which he has devoted himself for many years, the dots and lines placed at measured intervals on the surface are not mere geometric forms. They are living traces—the direct transfer of a single breath and bodily movement onto the plate. It is precisely the minute variations that arise between repeated marks—the faint abrasions, the pooling of ink—that render visible fragments of time extending toward eternity.
Equally, the vast areas of unmarked space that dominate many of his compositions are the most eloquent elements of Lee Ufan’s prints. With the placement of a single point of ink, what was once simply “white paper” is transformed into a charged, living space. Within the expansion of this blankness, the viewer’s gaze discovers an infinite depth, resonant with quiet tension.
To contemplate Lee Ufan’s prints is to enter a meditative state, standing within serene silence and reconfiguring one’s relationship with the world. Each point and each line he inscribes continues to pose a fundamental question—especially within our loquacious contemporary society—about the essential meaning of being.
When one unravels the world of Lee Ufan’s prints, it becomes clear that it is a rigorous field of spiritual discipline in which the active act of “making” is reduced to an absolute minimum, allowing the material itself to speak and enabling the subtle tremor of ma—the space in between—to be perceived. In the lithographs and drypoints to which he has devoted himself for many years, the dots and lines placed at measured intervals on the surface are not mere geometric forms. They are living traces—the direct transfer of a single breath and bodily movement onto the plate. It is precisely the minute variations that arise between repeated marks—the faint abrasions, the pooling of ink—that render visible fragments of time extending toward eternity.
Equally, the vast areas of unmarked space that dominate many of his compositions are the most eloquent elements of Lee Ufan’s prints. With the placement of a single point of ink, what was once simply “white paper” is transformed into a charged, living space. Within the expansion of this blankness, the viewer’s gaze discovers an infinite depth, resonant with quiet tension.
To contemplate Lee Ufan’s prints is to enter a meditative state, standing within serene silence and reconfiguring one’s relationship with the world. Each point and each line he inscribes continues to pose a fundamental question—especially within our loquacious contemporary society—about the essential meaning of being.
