Lee Ufan's Relatum-Silence, 2010

Art-loving pilgrims to Naoshima Island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea have a new attraction following the commemoration ceremony on May 30th to mark the completion of a museum devoted to the work of the celebrated 74-year-old Japanese-Korean minimalist Lee Ufan, who will be the subject of a retrospective at the Guggenheim museum in 2011.

The semi-underground building, designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, is the latest in a series of innovative museums and contemporary art projects on Naoshima and several surrounding islands sponsored by Soichiro Fukutake, the philanthropic-minded chairman of Benesse Holdings, a Japanese educational publishing company. Speaking at the dedication ceremony, Fukutake said that his vision is "to create a place where art, architecture, and the natural environment can interact with each other separated from everyday life."

Lee Ufan's Relatum-Resonance, 2010

Dialogue, 2009

Although the footprint of the museum is quite large — 32,349 square feet — the new building expands into nature without imposing itself on the site, a secluded valley that slopes gently towards the sea. Visitors approaching the museum first come across a large sculpture plaza, beyond which Ando's building is almost entirely buried into the hillside behind reinforced concrete walls. It looks a bit like a bunker. 

Inside the building is a series of small rooms in which the artist has installed a selection of paintings and sculptures from the 1970s to the present. Natural light filters into the rooms from narrow skylights above, giving the artworks a ghostly aura. The experience is a powerful, moving one — the relationship between works of art and architecture creating a contemplative space where viewers can think slowly and quietly. It is deeply meditative. 

From Line, 1974

With Winds, 1983

In the neighboring Benesee Art Site Naoshima, Fukutake, a reclusive billionaire Japanese businessman, has dotted the landscape with dozens of works — some site-specific — by such artists as Teresita Fernández, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, Bruce Nauman, and James Turrell. The art in the Ufan museum, sharing the same environmental sensitivity, is marked by its restraint. The artist describes one work on view, Relatum, 1979–96, as “a room of silence with nothing but an iron plate leaning against a wall and a stone on the floor.” An installation is also planned of an empty mural-lined space designed to echo the sound of people entering it.

The launch of the Ufan museum coincides with the highly anticipated debut of the first Setouchi International Art Festival, a 100-day celebration spanning Naoshima and the adjacent islands, on which Fukutake plans to continue introducing new art venues. In the middle of a pine forest on Teshima, for instance, he is opening a small museum in late July to house an installation by Christian Boltanski. Construction has also begun on the Teshima Art Museum, to be ready for visitors in the fall. Fukutake is as much a connoisseur of architecture as he is of art: the Teshima’s building, a collaboration between the architect Ryue Nishizawa and the artist Rei Naito, is shaped like a drop of water.