First look: Lee Ufan creates a minimalist perfume bottle for Guerlain

South Korean painter, sculptor and philosopher Lee Ufan is the latest artist to accept Guerlain’s annual invitation to reimagine a signature fragrance bottle from the French perfumer’s archive. Launching today (15 October 2024) to coincide with Art Basel’s imminent return to Paris on the 18th, is Ufan’s take on the ‘Flacon Quadrilobé’, which was first designed in 1908 by Baccarat.

This new project marks an extension of Guerlain and Ufan’s partnership, which started last year (2023) with the ‘Art & Environment Prize’, an initiative awarding one young artist per year with a residency and show at Lee Ufan Arles, a newly opened exhibition space in the city designed by Tadao Ando.

First look: Lee Ufan creates a minimalist perfume bottle for Guerlain

The 88-year-old Ufan has spent most of his life living and working in Japan, moving to Tokyo in 1956. In the mid-1960s he co-founded the pioneering avant-garde group Mono-ha (School of Things), which rejected notions of Western representation in modern art. The artist defines his paintings in particular as ‘born from the spectacular encounter between what I’ve painted and what I haven’t.’

Although considered to be ‘abstract’, they are characterised by the intentionality of his mark-making – a purposefulness beautifully demonstrated in the single brushstroke featured on the Guerlain bottle. ‘Painting is neither entirely a figure nor entirely a composition,’ says Ufan. ‘It expresses a connection with space and establishes a relationship with the viewer. In this way, I hope to establish a poetic dialogue with him, that the work stimulates the imagination, that it allows him to fly off the canvas and open up to the outside world, to infinity.’

Ufan worked with Maison Bernardaud to craft the bottle from pure white chiselled porcelain, harmoniously accented by a daubing of green paint and a silk string around the neck and stopper.

In Japanese culture, green is representative of eternal life and rebirth, and turns one's mind to the natural world. This is also a key starting point for ‘Souvenir d’Orchidée’ – the new scent that Ufan’s bottle contains. An aquatic and musky floral with a heady blend of angelica, sambac jasmine, iris powder, moss and amber tincture, the perfume is the result of his collaboration with the creative director of Guerlain fragrances, Delphine Jelk.

‘I hope you can feel this notion of purity and freshness from nature in the fragrance,’ she tells Wallpaper*. ‘There is a mineral, ozonic quality [to the perfume] which is almost humid. It gives an impression of abundant nature, of water that gives life.’

Jelk, who joined Maison Guerlain in 2014, is one of the pre-eminent noses in the industry. She takes a visual approach to perfumery, using mood boards before she starts compiling scent materials. She describes the making of ‘Souvenir d’Orchidée’ as a ‘four-handed process’ that started with a discussion about Ufan’s olfactory memories. ‘I created a film in my mind from the stories he told me,’ she says. ‘I envisioned him as a child in the mountains, dazzled by the beauty of an orchid.’

Guerlain was founded in 1828 by Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain. Today, it counts itself amongst the oldest perfume and cosmetics houses in the world, also boasting the oldest perfume in constant production, ‘Jicky’. Made by Aimé Guerlain in 1889, ‘Jicky’ is described as ‘the first modern perfume’ for its revolutionary use of notes from both synthetic and natural origins.

‘I always like to maintain a strong connection with the brand’s heritage, while also incorporating my own desires for using certain raw materials or other elements,’ says Jelk. The merging of the old and the new is further highlighted in Guerlain’s now two-year-long partnership with Art Basel, which will stock 2,000 co-branded editions of ‘Œillet Pourpre’ exclusively in the new Art Basel shop by Colette founder Sarah Andelman.

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