Lee Ufan
October 27, 2023 - April 28, 2024
Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of the Present

Hamburger Bahnhof presents the first retrospective of the painter and sculptor Lee Ufan in Germany. Lee is one of the most important representatives of the Mono-ha school in Japan and the Dansaekhwa movement in Korea, which developed parallel to other minimalist art movements. The exhibition shows around 50 works from five decades of his work. Lee's decades-long engagement with painting addresses an extraordinary highlight: Rembrandt's famous "Self-Portrait with Velvet Beret" (1634) from the Berlin Picture Gallery is shown for the first time in the Hamburger Bahnhof and enters into dialogue with Lee's expansive installation "Relatum - The Mirror Road" (2016/2023). . Lee's art introduces visitors to the formative art movements of Japan and Korea in the 1970s and enables a new look at an icon of Western European art.

The exhibition provides an insight into the work of the Korean artist Lee Ufan (born 1936, lives and works in Kamakura, Japan), almost 50 years after his first exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Lee's philosophical writings shaped the artist collective Mono-ha (German School of Things), which was active in Tokyo from 1968 to 1975. Mono-ha is one of the most influential styles of post-war art in Japan. In the sculptures and installations, the artists combined raw materials such as stones, branches or earth with industrial materials such as steel or glass. This understanding of art as a new order of things is shown, for example, in Lee's sculpture series “Relatum” (from 1968). In the Dansaekhwa movement, Korean artists explored abstraction and materiality from the mid-1970s, primarily in monochrome painting. Paintings from Lee’s series “From Point” (from 1973) and “From Line” (from 1978) bear witness to this. The sculpture “Relatum” (1977) from the Nationalgalerie collection is on display in the museum’s garden and can be seen in Berlin for the first time since 1985.

During the run, an artistic intervention by Lee will be shown in the Rembrandt Hall of the Gemäldegalerie. Lee, who repeatedly refers to European roots in his works, enters into a complex dialogue with the works of Rembrandt.

A publication will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath with assistant curators Luisa Bachmann and Lisa Hörstmann.

In collaboration with the Lee Ufan Foundation, Arles. With generous support from the Friends of the National Gallery.

A special exhibition at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin State Museums