The Relatum sculpture are grounded in the Mono Ha philosophy which Lee Ufan helped to established in the 1060’s. The works from this period are often produced as floor-based, scatterlike works that explore the phenomenological encounter between natural and industrial materials, employing rocks, steel plates, glass panes, lightbulbs, cotton, and Japanese paper in their barest condition to create vividly real spatial and temporal structures.
As Mono-ha’s leading theorist and practitioner, Lee recast the object as a network of relations based on parity between the viewer, materials, and site. Mono-ha works are essentially performative and site-specific, requiring Lee to recreate them onsite. After 1972, Lee titled his sculptural works Relatum, a philosophical term denoting objects or events between which a relation exists. “A work of art, rather than being a self-complete, independent entity, is a resonant relationship with the outside,” Lee has written. “It exists together with the world, simultaneously what is and what is not, that is, a relatum.”
Throughout the 1970s, Lee increasingly limited his choice of sculptural materials to steel plates and stones, conceptualizing the materials as connected opposites: the factory-rolled steel is the stone’s distant, abstract product. To Lee, the stone in its natural state belongs to an unknown world of “externality” or “the other” that exists beyond the self. Arranging the plates and stones in precise relationships—leaning against the wall or each other, or lying on the floor—the Relatum works revolve around the spatiotemporal relationship between the viewer, the components, and their surroundings.

Guggenheim, 2011

The Relatum sculpture are grounded in the Mono Ha philosophy which Lee Ufan helped to established in the 1060’s. The works from this period are often produced as floor-based, scatterlike works that explore the phenomenological encounter between natural and industrial materials, employing rocks, steel plates, glass panes, lightbulbs, cotton, and Japanese paper in their barest condition to create vividly real spatial and temporal structures.
As Mono-ha’s leading theorist and practitioner, Lee recast the object as a network of relations based on parity between the viewer, materials, and site. Mono-ha works are essentially performative and site-specific, requiring Lee to recreate them onsite. After 1972, Lee titled his sculptural works Relatum, a philosophical term denoting objects or events between which a relation exists. “A work of art, rather than being a self-complete, independent entity, is a resonant relationship with the outside,” Lee has written. “It exists together with the world, simultaneously what is and what is not, that is, a relatum.”
Throughout the 1970s, Lee increasingly limited his choice of sculptural materials to steel plates and stones, conceptualizing the materials as connected opposites: the factory-rolled steel is the stone’s distant, abstract product. To Lee, the stone in its natural state belongs to an unknown world of “externality” or “the other” that exists beyond the self. Arranging the plates and stones in precise relationships—leaning against the wall or each other, or lying on the floor—the Relatum works revolve around the spatiotemporal relationship between the viewer, the components, and their surroundings.

Guggenheim, 2011

The Relatum sculpture are grounded in the Mono Ha philosophy which Lee Ufan helped to established in the 1060’s. The works from this period are often produced as floor-based, scatterlike works that explore the phenomenological encounter between natural and industrial materials, employing rocks, steel plates, glass panes, lightbulbs, cotton, and Japanese paper in their barest condition to create vividly real spatial and temporal structures.
As Mono-ha’s leading theorist and practitioner, Lee recast the object as a network of relations based on parity between the viewer, materials, and site. Mono-ha works are essentially performative and site-specific, requiring Lee to recreate them onsite. After 1972, Lee titled his sculptural works Relatum, a philosophical term denoting objects or events between which a relation exists. “A work of art, rather than being a self-complete, independent entity, is a resonant relationship with the outside,” Lee has written. “It exists together with the world, simultaneously what is and what is not, that is, a relatum.”
Throughout the 1970s, Lee increasingly limited his choice of sculptural materials to steel plates and stones, conceptualizing the materials as connected opposites: the factory-rolled steel is the stone’s distant, abstract product. To Lee, the stone in its natural state belongs to an unknown world of “externality” or “the other” that exists beyond the self. Arranging the plates and stones in precise relationships—leaning against the wall or each other, or lying on the floor—the Relatum works revolve around the spatiotemporal relationship between the viewer, the components, and their surroundings.

Guggenheim, 2011

The Relatum sculpture are grounded in the Mono Ha philosophy which Lee Ufan helped to established in the 1060’s. The works from this period are often produced as floor-based, scatterlike works that explore the phenomenological encounter between natural and industrial materials, employing rocks, steel plates, glass panes, lightbulbs, cotton, and Japanese paper in their barest condition to create vividly real spatial and temporal structures.
As Mono-ha’s leading theorist and practitioner, Lee recast the object as a network of relations based on parity between the viewer, materials, and site. Mono-ha works are essentially performative and site-specific, requiring Lee to recreate them onsite. After 1972, Lee titled his sculptural works Relatum, a philosophical term denoting objects or events between which a relation exists. “A work of art, rather than being a self-complete, independent entity, is a resonant relationship with the outside,” Lee has written. “It exists together with the world, simultaneously what is and what is not, that is, a relatum.”
Throughout the 1970s, Lee increasingly limited his choice of sculptural materials to steel plates and stones, conceptualizing the materials as connected opposites: the factory-rolled steel is the stone’s distant, abstract product. To Lee, the stone in its natural state belongs to an unknown world of “externality” or “the other” that exists beyond the self. Arranging the plates and stones in precise relationships—leaning against the wall or each other, or lying on the floor—the Relatum works revolve around the spatiotemporal relationship between the viewer, the components, and their surroundings.

Guggenheim, 2011