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Maelee Lee
Feminine and Strong
October 5 ~ 26, 2009
Opening Reception: 10/9 (Fri.) 6 ~ 8 pm
Portrait of Shoe, Installation
Maelee Lee's recent work comprises photography, video and sculptural installations
in a post-minimalist style that embraces simplicity yet has multi-dimensional
content. These media link Lee to the Post-minimalists who in their anti-formalist
enterprise sought to redefine art adopting an anti-painting stance. Lee's
photographs and sculptures usher in a new direction because of their naturalism
that remains nevertheless conceptual. Whether working with photography,
video projection or sculpture, Lee's focus remains conceptual as the real
substance of her work. While Minimalists like Judd and Serra in their
embrace of purist aesthetics declared painting dead for its inability
to be a literal sculpture object without reference to the real world,
Lee plays with space rendering it illusionistic thus is antithetical to
their enterprise. Not only do her works contain references to nature but
they are not literal objects of sculpture being photographs. It is precisely
because of these references to the real world that Lee's photographs are
not like the sterile silent cubes of the minimalists, but are warm and
inviting.
Lee has revitalized art by reintegrating it into life creating such sculptures
as her Red Pumps shown in conjunction with her photographs. The
artist explores the visual process by creating perceptual ambiguity so
that when looking at her installations one can never really be sure of
their spatial relationship to their surroundings. This constant questioning
of viewed space results in ambivalence that maintains retinal dynamics
so that, Lee's work cannot so easily be placed into any one particular
category or style. Her Red Pumps are as huge and monumental as
one of Claes Oldenburg's objects, does this mean that she's a pop artist?
Her purist rendering of space is like Judd’s; as is her multiplication
of objects. Do these tendencies make Lee a Minimalist? And, Lee's engagement
with spatial ambiguity relates her work to Op Art. One thing for sure,
conceptually Lee is close to the minimalist Sol LeWitt, who in 1965 wrote,
"the idea of concept is the most important aspect of the work....
The idea becomes the machine that makes the art."
For More Information: Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos, Exhibitions Director, tvrachopoulos@gmail.com
or Michael Yuge, Administrative Director tci@tenri.org. Please call 212-645-2800
or 212-691-7978.
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