Lee Ufan's Tadao Ando-designed exhibition centre opens in Arles on 15 April

7 April 2022

Following a presentation of Lee Ufan's sculpture across the site of the ancient Alyscamps Roman necropolis in the city of Arles, Lee Ufan opens his dynamic exhibition space, Lee Ufan Arles, this month in the heart of Hotel Vernon, a 17th century mansion located in the city's historic centre.

Lee Ufan Arles intends to be an exhibition centre introducing the artist’s work, but also to be a dynamic space supporting and providing patronage for diverse artistic and cultural activities. After his exhibitions at the Palace of Versailles in 2014 or at Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2019, Ufan began a new chapter in his passionate relationship with France. Lee Ufan Arles is the third biggest exhibition site of his work, after the Lee Ufan Museum of Naoshima opened in 2010 and Space Lee Ufan at Busan Museum of Art opened in 2015.

With the help of architect Tadao Ando, who previously designed the first Lee Ufan museum on the Japanese island of Naoshima in 2010, Lee Ufan Arles takes you on a journey through sculptures, installations and a selection of about thirty paintings. The exhibition space on the ground floor introduces ten sculptures named Relatum, the Latin title used by Ufan since 1972. The artist hardly intervenes on the natural and industrial materials that his paintings are composed of, such as stone, steel plate, glass, cotton paper, wood, rope, leather, oil, paraffin or water. Their selection and positioning in the space are cardinal elements of the creative process. The encounter between these elements and the relation ensuing it is the core concept of these works. On the first floor, Ufan displays paintings in rooms into which you can wander following the chronology and the successive evolutions of the artist’s brushstrokes. The second floor will host temporary exhibitions and events.

Image © Lee Ufan. Photography by Julie Joubert.