Press Release

Lee Ufan is considered a founding member of Mono-ha (School of Things), a loosely defined group of artists who worked in a shared sculptural idiom in Japan roughly between 1969 and ‘74. Formally similar to Postminimalism and Arte Povera in the West, Mono-ha artists juxtapose diverse materials in ways that emphasize their inherent properties and consider the spectator as yet another component of the artwork. Accordingly, rather than asserting or denying authorship over an object, in his early works Lee distributes forms across a system of material and physical relations, incorporating within them the viewer.

Opening in spring 2026 at Dia Beacon, this exhibition will enable visitors not only to encounter a conceptual dialogue between Lee’s paintings and sculptural works, but also to deepen their understanding of international contemporaneity of formal and conceptual concerns that developed across regions from the late 1960s to the ‘80s. Lee Ufan is curated by Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, curator and co–department head, with Min Sun Jeon, assistant curator. All exhibitions at Dia are made possible through the Economou Exhibition Fund.

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About the Artist

Lee Ufan is a seminal figure in contemporary art, known for a rigorous yet meditative minimalism that rethinks how viewers encounter materials, space, and time. A leading theorist and artist of Japan’s Mono‑ha movement in the late 1960s, he also became a pivotal voice in Korean Dansaekhwa and has been the subject of major retrospectives in Europe, Asia, and the United States, including the landmark exhibition Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2011.

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Also Exhibiting at DIA Beacon

About the Gallery

DIA Beacon is a renowned contemporary art museum situated in Beacon, New York, on the banks of the Hudson River. Housed in a repurposed 1929 Nabisco box printing factory, its expansive galleries and minimalist architecture make it a destination for lovers of postwar art and industrial design.

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Address
3 Beekman Street
Beacon
New York
United States
Opening Hours
January–March
Friday–Monday 11 am–4 pm

April–October
Thursday–Monday 11 am–6 pm

November–December
Thursday–Monday 11 am–4 pm
(1)
New York 3 Beekman Street, Beacon
DIA Beacon
3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York, United States
+1 845 440 0100
http://www.diaart.org

Opening hours
January–March
Friday–Monday 11 am–4 pm

April–October
Thursday–Monday 11 am–6 pm

November–December
Thursday–Monday 11 am–4 pm
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