Most artists have only a knowledge of philosophy. They understand enough about aesthetics to talk about art theory and they know a bit of metaphysics so they can give their work some relevance to humanity. Philosophy, in its modern-day form, is more akin to a science than an art. It expresses its concepts and arguments in the mathematical language of formal logic.
That's where South Korean-born artist Lee U-fan is different: he uses his art to comment on relatively complex philosophical ideas such as phenomenology, a 20th-century philosophical tradition that studies how phenomena are perceived by our conscious minds.
While Lee's works of stone and steel are not philosophical treatises in themselves, they are unusual in the way they take philosophical arguments as a point of creative departure. 'Essentially, Lee's work can be seen as a model of philosophy,' says Alexandra Munroe, senior curator of Asian Art at the New York Guggenheim Museum, where Lee's first US retrospective, 'Marking Infinity', is being held. 'That philosophy is both political and metaphysical.'
Lee is the third East Asian artist to be showcased in a major Guggenheim career retrospective after fellow Korean Paik Nam-june in 2000 and Chinese contemporary artist Cai Guoqiang in 2008. Born in a mountain village in South Korea in 1936, Lee studied and worked in Japan. As a sculptor, painter and essayist he was an important figure in the Japanese Mono-ha movement in the late 1960s and 70s. Mono-ha, which means 'school of things', uses the often-obscure philosophy of Martin Heidegger and the modern Buddhist ideas of the Kyoto School to posit a new theory of art.
Art is generally about expression: through their work artists are expressing their views about the subject before them. Mono-ha rejects this idea of the artistic process: Lee says he does not comment on his subjects at all. In fact, he says, his work is devoid of personal expression. His work is about revealing what is there, rather than commenting on it, he says. If he presents a stone as part of his artwork, he intends it to be just that: a real, individual stone. 'Expression is not almighty for me,' Lee says at the opening of the US exhibition.
If all this sounds theoretical, that's because it is. Like most conceptual art, Lee's sculptures become more interesting when the ideas behind them become known. The artist has concentrated on long series of works which have taken place over years. His Relatum series, works of which are on show at the Guggenheim, is the most famous. The works in this series consist of rock and/or steel plates arranged in different spatial configurations. The spatial arrangement is of primary importance to Lee, says curator Munroe. Artworks often have a focal point, a centre to which the eye automatically gravitates. But Lee's works are designed to be viewed from any perspective.
This is the way that Lee expresses his political philosophy, Munroe says. 'In a post-modern, post-colonial world, there is no longer a defined centre. It is a de-centred, multi-polarised world. We have moved from a world containing fixed socio-political hierarchies to a world where everything is becoming decentralised. There are now many different centres.