Now In Korea
Hoam Museum Opens Lee Ufan’s New Space ‘Silentium’
Creatrip Team
a month ago
Hoam Museum has opened a new permanent gallery, 'Silentium' (묵시암), by world-renowned Korean-born artist Lee Ufan within its traditional garden Heewon. After a members-only preview from Oct 28, the space will be publicly accessible from Nov 4. The installation includes three previously unseen indoor works and three large outdoor pieces near the museum lake in the 'Old Stone Garden' (옛돌정원).
Lee, influential in the 1960s–70s Mono-ha (모노하) movement, has long engaged with themes of emptiness, relation, and natural phenomena. In Silentium he uses color more actively than usual: subtle gradations in dots and circles suggest cycles of life. An entrance piece of heavy stone and iron guides visitors into a space for silence and reflection. Inside are 'Floor Painting', a rising, expansive composition of dots forming a circle; 'Wall Painting', a sparsely rendered returning point that balances painted and unpainted space; and 'Shadow Painting', which pairs cast shadows with drawn shadows to blur nature and imagination.
Outdoors, large works fuse metal and stone: 'Relatum—The Encounter' (a stainless-steel ring to be completed with paired stones), 'Relatum—The Sky Road' (a 20 m super-mirror steel walkway by the lake), and 'Relatum—Bursting' (curved steel with natural boulders evoking tension and release). Lee describes his practice as reducing and letting go to open greater infinity — emphasizing relations between what is made and unmade. The project, proposed by the artist and supported by the Samsung Foundation, allows visitors in the Seoul area ongoing access to Lee’s work against the museum’s landscaped setting.
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