Lee Ufan was born in 1936 in South Korea and studied calligraphy, poetry, and painting from an early age, and later philosophy at the Seoul National University. He moved to Japan in his early twenties and continued his studies at Nihon University, Tokyo, reading Asian philosophers Laozi, Zhuang Zhou, Confucius, and Western thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Foucault, and Levinas.
In 1967 Lee published , a critical examination of aesthetics, cultural production, and national identity. In this same year he held his first solo exhibition at Sato Gallery in Tokyo, and in 1968 participated in a group show of contemporary Korean artists at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. It was here—a reference to French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)—where a boulder is carefully placed on a sheet of glass that rests on the floor, or on a steel plate. The stone is then lifted slightly and gently dropped, cracking the glass. The artist went on to make a great many versions of this work, each one is unique as the controlled action of impact creates a different outcome every time. The work is an amalgam of gesture, process and systems, tension and balance, and exemplifies the artist’s constant search for momentum and harmony. Lee would retroactively title all his sculptural works, (1968–).
