이우환(Lee Ufan, 1936- ) 화백과 마크 로스코(Mark Rothko, 1903-1970)의 2인전 'Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko'가 9월 4일부터 10월 26일까지 글로벌 화랑 페이스 갤러리(Pace Gallery) 서울 지부에서 열린다. 이우환 화백이 직접 큐레이터를 맡아 기획한 이 전시는 이우환 화백이 2018년-2023년 사이에 그린 ' Dialogue and Response' 시리즈 그림과 1950-1960년대 마르 로스코의 색면 회화가 소개된다. 이 듀오전은 프리즈 서울(Frieze Seoul, 9/4-9/7, 2024)과 동시에 진행된다. 

 

Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko

Curated by Lee Ufan

 

September 4 – October 26, 2024

PACE Gallery: 267 Itaewon-ro, Seoul

 

 

From Left: Lee Ufan, Response, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 218 x 291 cm © Lee Ufan / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Mark Rothko, No. 16 [?] {Green, White, Yellow on Yellow}, 1951, oil on canvas, 171.8 x 113.3 cm, Collection of Christopher Rothko

 

Seoul—Pace is pleased to present Correspondence: Lee Ufan and Mark Rothko, a two-artist exhibition curated by Lee Ufan in collaboration with the Rothko family, at its Seoul gallery. On view from September 4 to October 26 and coinciding with Frieze Seoul, the show will span two floors of the gallery, bringing a suite of paintings from Lee’s Dialogue and Response series, made between 2018 and 2023, into conversation with major works by Mark Rothko from the 1950s and 1960s.

 

Born in 1936, Lee Ufan was a leading figure of the Japanese avant-garde group Mono-ha in the late 1960s. His artistic practice, which emphasizes the relationships between space, perception, and object, developed from his deep appreciation for nature and materiality. Rothko, a pioneer of the New York School, is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, known for his Color-field paintings of immense scale that are imbued with psychological and spiritual import. While each artist’s work will be given a dedicated space and presented separately in the upcoming show in Seoul, the exhibition will draw out the many resonances and intersections—in terms of color, surface, and atmosphere—that cut across both artists’ work.

 

The paintings of Rothko have long been celebrated for their ability to summon the sublime powers of color, dissolving fields of pigment into expanses of radiant atmosphere. Color is equally potent in Lee’s paintings, though it often emerges as a frozen gesture, in contrast to Rothko’s gesture-less surfaces. If Rothko’s indecipherable application of paint evokes the scumbles and fogs of late Titian—flooding the entire canvas and erasing any sense of line or hard contour—Lee’s forms are comparatively crisp and self-contained. Yet both artists use color as a locus for eliciting a deeply contemplative state in the viewer, and both deal with the aesthetics of air, emptiness, and vapor in their work, investigating painting’s capacity to intensify our experience of color and to produce an effect that is at once awesome and meditative, conveying both power and quiescence.

 

For these two artists, painting becomes a tool for crystallizing the ephemeral into the concrete. Lee’s works capture the fleeting energy of a brushstroke and concretize it into the immediacy of color, making it feel as solid as stone. In a similar way, Rothko congeals atmosphere into the fixed stability of form.

 

In Lee’s work, the brushstroke is intimately tied to the artist’s breath—this vapor, this “atmos” of the lungs, which settles onto the canvas and takes the form of a picture. Rothko’s paintings often have the sense of nebulous clouds—as if air masses were taking shape, brooding within an expanse of darkening sky. Situating the artists in dialogue, the presentation in Seoul explores how their works embody these poetics of vapor and air. Seen together, they speak to the climatic possibilities of abstraction, in which paintings produce their own weather, transforming and reshaping our experience of space and our very presence within it.

 

In addition to his paintings, the exhibition will also include a new sculpture by Lee, Relatum – Correspondence (2024), installed in the gallery’s courtyard. Featuring a heavy stone dropped on a steel plate, this work examines the relationships between individual elements as defined by both space and objecthood.

 

Lee Ufan (b. 1936, Kyongsang-namdo, South Korea) emerged as one of the leading figures of the Japanese avant-garde group Mono-ha, in the late 1960s. Emphasizing the relationships between space, perception, and object, his works develop from an appreciation of nature and the inherent qualities of his materials. Here, the action of repetitive minimal marks denotes an association between the body and temporality. Combining artistic practice with philosophical writing, Lee’s oeuvre is characterized by thoughtful and direct iterations of gestures, engaging the viewer in contemplation of abstract forms and vivid restraint, manifesting in sculpture, paintings, and works on paper.

 

Mark Rothko (b. 1903, Dvinsk, Russia; d. 1970, New York), a pioneer of the New York School, is predominantly recognized for his mesmerizing Color-field paintings of immense scale produced between 1949 and 1970, which followed his works of figurative and biomorphic imagery. His stylistic explorations resulted in a proliferation of works on paper and canvas, with layered transparencies of vibrant pigments and earth tones culminating in luminous and ethereal soft-edged compositions. His approach to painting emphasized an experimental engagement with process in order to fully articulate a universal expression. Among Rothko’s artistic philosophies, he held that painting was a deeply psychological and spiritual experience through which basic human emotions could be communicated. 

 

Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential artists and estates of the 20th and 21st centuries, founded by Arne Glimcher in 1960. Holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko, Pace has a unique history that can be traced to its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist and Light and Space movements. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery continues to nurture its longstanding relationships with its legacy artists and estates while also making an investment in the careers of contemporary artists, including Torkwase Dyson, Loie Hollowell, Robert Nava, Adam Pendleton, and Marina Perez Simão.

 

Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher and President Samanthe Rubell, Pace has established itself as a collaborative force in the art world, partnering with other galleries and nonprofit organizations around the world in recent years. The gallery advances its mission to support its artists and share their visionary work with audiences and collectors around the world through a robust global program anchored by its exhibitions of both 20th century and contemporary art and scholarly projects from its imprint Pace Publishing, which produces books introducing new voices to the art historical canon. This artist-first ethos also extends to public installations, philanthropic events, performances, and other interdisciplinary programming presented by Pace. 

 

Today, Pace has eight locations worldwide, including two galleries in New York—its eight-story headquarters at 540 West 25th Street and an adjacent 8,000-square-foot exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street. The gallery’s history in the New York art world dates to 1963, when it opened its first space in the city on East 57th Street. A champion of Light and Space artists, Pace has also been active in California for some 60 years, opening its West Coast flagship in Los Angeles in 2022. The gallery maintains European footholds in London and Geneva as well as Berlin, where it established an office in 2023. Pace was one of the first international galleries to have a major presence in Asia, where it has been active since 2008, the year it first opened in Beijing’s vibrant 798 Art District. It now operates galleries in Hong Kong and Seoul and opens its first gallery in Japan in Tokyo’s Azabudai Hills development in 2024.

https://www.pacegallery.com

 

 

*이우환 Open Dimention@허쉬혼뮤지엄, DC, 2019

 

*색면화가 마크 로스코의 생애 

*마크 로스코 자살 미스테리와 미술계의 음모 <1>

*마크 로스코 자살 미스테리와 미술계의 음모 <2>

*마크 로스코 필립스컬렉션(DC) 

*내셔널 갤러리 마크 로스코 룸