Marking Infinity, Lee Ufan

I recently had the opportunity of visiting Lee Ufan´s show at the Guggenheim in NY, anyone who knows what I´m into knows the following:

A. How the abstract blows my mind.
B. The abstract-conceptual linked to any sort of philosophy is a shoe in for my own -mind fucking- experience.
C. Anything with the word "infinity" makes my heart skip a beat.

Beginning with this Frank Lloyd Wright sculpture - the museum itself -, has always caught my attention in its effectiveness in showcasing art. A bit ignorant i sometimes feel, when i don´t know exactly where the curated show begins or ends, or if I´m missing something in between, or if i should move clockwise or counterclockwise.

So, as a reaffirmation to Lee Ufan´s Marking Infinity discourse, the show was curated from the bottom-up (in contrast to how it´s usually curated, from the top, down), mirroring a spiralling seashell, (reminding me of Fibonacci´s golden ratio).





The Reflexion:

Revolving around the notion of encounter- seeing the bare existence of what is actually before us and focusing on "the world as it is".

"Expressive action begins with sensing a rupture in existence. The desire to eliminate this gap and become fused with existence itself becomes the will to create art"

"Perpetual passing of the present"

"Form is not static but a phenomenon of becoming"

Lee understood process as a system of connectivity between distinct components. " Each moment.. Occurs only once, but everything is a continuation of single moments, it is necessary for them to resonate with each other"

"The phenomenon of encounter is momentary.. In discontinuous, momentary flashes of light, it liberates human beings from one-sidedness and seclusion of the ego, if only for a moment . Unlike the human will, which always desires to define things and give them meaning or a place in history, the state of the world unto itself always teaches is that things are uncertain and indefinite"

Kierkegaard and Heidegger describe encounters as events attending the point of rupture between self and the other.
Nishida Kitaro as "pure experience".
Bachelard as poetic moments and
Baudelaire as correspondence.
A unilateral way if thinking is not involved in any ot these approaches.

The metaphysical relationship between being and nothingness.

"We can simultaneously sense existence and dissolution, genesis and extinction".

"Empty resonant space"



Conclusions:
As objects manifest themselves as something pure and/or repeat themselves, there is an opening to a finite yet endless possibility of possibilities. A "pure" form, is just a pure form. A tree is evidently a tree. A rock, etc...
By seeing things for what they are is where this "finite" comes in, because the object is the bottom line, there´s no more room for word, image or text, which is beautiful to its own extent, but the opening of possibilities comes through exchange. What type of tree our mind links to the word or image of it, on the other hand, is never finite. This was what essentially attracted and moved me, how Ufan´s representation is so simple yet so mind expanding complex, evoking the pure form itself, and still taking us to many realms beyond it.

Kandinsky said in "Concerning the spiritual in art", that no form is formless. That nothing is shaped out of nothingness. What interferes or plays a crucial role is the context, the spectator, and the object(s). When one becomes unmoved by whatevers in front, we´re either lacking in context, space, time... Or, soul.