Lee Ufan's earliest series From Point and From Line in the first gallery of the SMAC Venice.
Diving into the abundance of life in Venice, its light, culture, chatter and music is enchanting, energizing and overwhelming at the same time. During the 61st Venice Biennale, another layer is added to this already extraordinary experience, with exhibitions and presentations extending far beyond the main venues of the Giardini and Arsenale and into palazzi, churches and unexpected spaces throughout the city.
Among them is a major exhibition of Lee Ufan at SMAC Venice, presented by Dia Art Foundation and developed in close collaboration with the artist. Entering the exhibition directly from Piazza San Marco creates a fascinating shift in perception. Outside, Venice offers its extraordinary liveliness; inside, Lee Ufan leads us towards concentration, stillness and an altogether more inward experience. After only a few moments in the exhibition's first gallery, the rhythm changes and our attention begins to focus on the smallest gestures.
This contrast is thoroughly enjoyable! Spanning six decades of his work as a painter and sculptor, this presentation coincides with the artist's 90th birthday.
From Point and From Line.
If painting can express the opposite of haste, this is perhaps what it feels like. Once one becomes aware of the physical process behind Lee Ufan's From Point paintings, they begin to operate on a level that goes far beyond the purely visual. While working on this series in the late 1960s, Lee introduced a controlled rhythm closely connected to his breathing into his artistic practice. Beginning with a brush fully loaded with pigment, he held his breath and repeatedly placed marks onto the canvas until almost no pigment remained. Only then would he breathe in, reload the brush and begin the sequence again. Each sequence moves gradually from full to empty, from presence towards disappearance. A strongly pigmented mark is followed by another, then another, each becoming progressively paler until only the faintest trace remains.
The related From Line paintings take this principle in another direction. Lee draws a broad brush from top to bottom. Once again, the pigment is gradually exhausted as the movement continues, but here the experience is concentrated into a single gesture. The lines appear more monumental than the marks of From Point. Yet the same transition remains fundamental: from full to empty, from material presence to its gradual disappearance.
From Winds and With Winds.
In the second gallery, something changes dramatically. Paintings from the From Winds and later With Winds series show a far more expressive brushstrokes, foregoing the disciplined repetition of the earlier works and giving way to broad, energetic gestures. Marks gather together, collide or appear to move freely across the canvas. The process of the brush unloading its pigment remains visible, but it acquires a different urgency.
Correspondance and Dialogue - the return of stillness.
Moving into the following rooms, the exhibition becomes quieter again. In the Correspondance paintings of the 1990s, density and movement give way to large expanses of almost untouched canvas interrupted by only a few broad, short, grey-blue brushstrokes. After the energy of With Winds, their restraint creates a remarkable sense of concentration. Here, perhaps more clearly than anywhere else in the exhibition, Lee makes us aware of the relationship between the empty and the filled space, between the painted and the unpainted. A single mark can suddenly make us conscious of an entire field of white that, without that mark, we might barely have noticed. The supposedly empty areas are therefore anything but empty. They become charged spaces in which the painted and unpainted depend upon one another. Lee himself has spoken of creating a "living composition of empty spaces."
This idea continues into the later Dialogue paintings, where Lee reduces his intervention even further, sometimes to a single large brushstroke. What at first appears radically minimal becomes, with time, remarkably intense.
Response – Lee Ufan's most recent series
Intense and surprising, colour – from reddish brown to deep blue – enters again into Lee's work. Starting in 2020 or 2021 (sources offer differing dates), Lee Ufan's Response series features bold horizontal and vertical brushstrokes on white canvases. Filled with ranging tones and wavy textures, these marks show control and mastery and vibrancy through colour and shape at the same time.
If you have the chance to be in Venice before November 22nd, we fully recommend visiting Lee Ufan's exhibition.
Lee Ufan Exhibition
Curated by Jessica Morgan
9.5. – 22.11.2026
Visitor Information
SMAC Venice
San Marco Art Centre
Piazza San Marco 105
Venezia / Italy
www.smacvenice.org
Opening Hours
Open Daily 10 am – 6 pm
Closed Tuesdays