TEFAF New York 2024

Lee Ufan and Richard Serra were born three years apart, the former in 1936 in Korea, the latter in California in 1939 (some sources say 1938; he passed away on March 26th, 2024, in Orient, in the state of New York). This generational convergence aside, it should be noted from the outset that their respective paths were, so to speak, symmetrical, and that certain comparable details and questions relating to gesture, matter, texture, time, space, and perception fueled both their practicies. Significantly, each was subject to an intermingling of Eastern and Western influences: from the 1950s onwards, the Korean artist immersed himself in European philosophy, and later in painting in the United States, while the American would remain forever marked by a stay in Kyoto in the spring of 1970 and his discovery of the Zen garden of Taizo-in. In both cases their work is characterized by a search for an “elementary situation”. A quest for the pared-down. For something of the order of the essential. In its raw state. “Unfiltered”, to use a term dear to Serra. An embodiment that reveals matter for what it “is”. Matter consubstantially linked to its shaping, to the chromatic spectrum to which it is subjected—black in Serra’s drawings—and to the gesture that accompanies it, without forgetting the constraints of the spatial context, natural or architectural, and the ambient light. It is up to the spectator to come to grips with its density, to demarcate a morphology and properties constantly modified by our movements and the multiple viewpoints that result. Surfaces can seem alternately matte or reflective, smooth or uneven. Encouraging proximity or distance. Urging us to stand still or to turn full circle, to witness or even take part in the dialogue between the stone and the metal sheet on the ground. Between the black and white of the drawings on the wall. Confronting each other, Lee Ufan and Richard Serra enrich these dialogues with an additional stratum, shedding new, combative light on the issues inherent in their approaches.

— Erik Verhagen