Hallow

Raw materials such as straw, gauze, charcoal, or burnt fabrics lie hidden beneath a heavy layer of paint. In some areas, they seem to grow out from the surface of the canvas. The surface structure appears fragile, resistant, and imperfect. Fractures, cracks, and frayed layers cover original fragments and expand through cyclic processes. Remnants flow, settle, linger, and transform into new surfaces that emerge as an aging patina or manifest in the form of sculptural objects. Lee's works emerge from a continuous sequence of repetition, layering, condensation, and dissolution. Mixed media determines the application of color, while materials are damaged or draped into organic forms, only to be repainted, exposed, or dissolved once again. Traces of temporality—beginning, decay, and renewal—are mutually dependent in their rhythm. Figuration is found only in allusion; it is never concrete, yet shockingly clear in its posture, its pain, and its transience. The resulting deposits are reminiscent of geological layers that reflect the remnants of a past state. They are sediments that rest, tear open, shift, and temporarily re-form. His working method moves within a field of tension between control and letting go, burden and break, and rigid as well as dynamic development. Structural and societal changes provide the starting point for his engagement with materiality, which reveals the vulnerability of internal and external processes of transformation and touches the core of human existence. Can emotions and memories be preserved in the long term? How profound or resilient does an organism of regeneration and growth appear before its completion?