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, which Lee understands as condensed time, are paired with industrial materials such as steel plates or glass. These combinations make viewers aware of the space, gravity and tension existing between matter, nature, human-made objects and site.

Lee’s idea of dialogue carries through his painting and sculpture alike: brushstroke and ground, stone and steel, object and viewer are never isolated but engage in a mutual conversation that emphasizes the space between. This gives forms and shapes to his lifelong interest in the inside/outside relationship — how forms communicate with their environment, how presence is deeply connected to absence, and how meaning arises through encounter, exchange and dialogue.

In the context of his first major exhibition in Portugal at Casa e Parque de Serralves, Lee’s aesthetic experimentations come into potent relief. Here the dialogues he has sustained throughout his six-decade practice unfold between built architecture and landscape. The presentation includes three outdoor sculptures, installed in the park framing direct encounters between stone, steel, and the environment; six paintings, including a site-specific one, whose meditative charge contrasts with the architecture structure; and three sculptures installed inside the house, each configured to reveal the tension between the materials and their contexts.

By locating Lee Ufan’s work in and around the villa’s ordered interiors and the park’s natural expanses, the exhibition stages the artist’s rigorous inquiry into the interplay of inside/outside, object and landscape, and the perceptual encounter that Lee has long articulated — affirming art as an ongoing and active dialogue with the world.