Dichotomies between marked and unmarked, painted and unpainted are revealed through the 24 blue lines that travel vertically down the canvas of Lee Ufan’s From Line, No. 790143 of 1979. The present lot represents an elegant example from Ufan’s iconic From Line series, which depict a series of repeated parallel blue lines. As a member of the Mono-ha movement, Ufan disregarded pictorial imagery and veered his interest towards the minimalist forms produced from simple, raw materials. The specially hand mixed paint and the use of artificial hair brushes maximizes the friction between paint and surface as the brush is pulled steadily down the composition from top to bottom. The paint, once potent at the top of the composition, gradually diminishes as it runs thinner and thinner and finally falls off the lower edge the canvas. This stunning technique results in what Ufan describes as a “mediating effect that empties out its surroundings and brings some kind of transcendence to the place where it is” (Lee Ufan, The Art of Encounter, Lisson Gallery, London, 2004).