With the desire to present the world “as-it-is”, artist Lee Ufan has exhibited five works at Dia’s annual Spring Benefit with support from COS and the Samsung Foundation of Culture.
Lee is recognized as a pioneer of the Mono-ha (School of Things) movement that originated in late 1960s Tokyo. Rather than creating traditional representational art, Mono-ha artists utilize and explore the properties of materials.
“The Mono-ha movement remains as formally and conceptually relevant now as it was at its conception in the 1960s,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director. “As we deepen Dia’s commitment to this period of art history, we have continued to expand our view to tell a more comprehensive narrative—casting light on artists working in parallel movements internationally.”
“Seen alongside work from Lee’s American and European peers, this exhibition will reveal the interconnected nature of these practices, which are aligned intellectually and historically and yet emerged distinctly from one another,” added Morgan. “Lee’s groundbreaking work has expanded, and continues to expand, the possibilities for Minimal and Postminimal sculpture, so this addition to our galleries in Beacon is an exciting moment in Dia’s history.”
“Lee Ufan positions himself as a mediator of materials rather than a maker of objects,” said Dia associate curator Alexis Lowry. “He brings familiar ready-made and found materials together with an extraordinary economy of means to present situations of both physical and perceptual suspense. This heightens our awareness of each element’s inherent physical and immaterial properties. The ethics of mediation that plays out in his art mirrors his international experience living between Korea and Japan, East Asia, Europe, and the United States.”
The Spring Benefit held at Dia:Beacon celebrates the second partnership between COS and the Dia Art Foundation. After a morning reception held in the Flavin Gallery, guests were treated to lunch alongside remarks from Dia Director Jessica Morgan and Chairman of Dia’s Board of Trustees Nathalie de Gunzburg. Drinks and conversations followed in the forecourt.
As part of the celebration, COS has also created an embossed leather document folio.
Opened on May 5, 2019, Lee’s exhibition will be on view for two years.
