​Light Paintings / AUSTIN LEE



Duration：NOVEMBER 8, 2016 - DECEMBER 17, 2016
Address：Building 2, Lane 298 Anfu Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China


BANK is proud to present Austin Lee’s Light Paintings for it’s new Shanghai venue’s inaugural exhibition.

NYC-based Austin Lee has become internationally known for concretizing the experience of living life through screens in the traditional medium of painting. Lee drafts his idiosyncratic pictures on an iPad then transfers them to paintings and drawings using airbrush and conventional painting techniques. The resulting compositions see subtle shifts play out between the hand and digital, the computerized and corporeal that has become emblematic of our time. Lee’s cartoon-esque characters, rendered in abstract, puffy forms and razor sharp lines, are often humorous and haunting, familiar and alien. They are the bi-product of the artist’s subconscious train of thought winding through endless associations of the quotidian and fantastical, the screen world and reality. Lee monumentalizes a new way of visualizing the world mediated by application filters and bold images, one in which the human spirit is not in recess but actively at play, domesticating the digital. 

Light Paintings presents a collection of Lee’s most recent paintings, drawings, and 3-D printed sculptures. ‘Light’ refers to the age-old formal quandary of creating the illusion of light upon a two dimensional surface. From Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro to Rothko’s Chapel paintings, the representation of light has mesmerized and confounded painters since the discipline’s inception. For Lee ‘light’ is not the ‘emanation of God’s spirit’ that Turner so passionately preached but the plush electronic light of touch-screen-technology that, in effect, has become the beacon of salvation for our information age. In these works conventional subjects are rendered in unconventional light — a light that doesn't simply bask the subject but instead illuminates it from within like our electronic screens. ‘Light’ not only refers to the light of the machine but also refers to the antidote of consumer culture and its excessive tendencies: light cigarettes, light soda; light music. Light Paintings are easier to understand and to ‘like’, they are less filling and lightly express the profundity of the superficial.
 
Austin Lee (b.1983) lives and works in New York. He received an MFA in Painting from Yale School of Art and a BFA from Tyler School of Art. He has since staged several solo exhibitions in the US and Europe. He was included in M WOODS, Beijing’s Full of Peril and Weirdness: Painting as a Universalism, 2015 as well as projects at the Tate Modern, London. His work is currently showcased at Juxtapoz x Superflat curated by Takeshi Murakami at Vancouver Art Gallery. His work has been championed and curated by artists like Takeshi Murakami, Peter Saul and Marylin Minter and written about in Art in America, ARTnews, New York Magazine, Leap, Time Out New York and London, The NY Observer, Hyperallergic, Black Book, Kaleidoscope Magazine, The Spectator, and Rhizome.





展期：2016/11/8 – 2016/12/17
地址：上海市徐汇区安福路298弄2号楼

BANK荣幸推出奥斯汀·李个展“光的绘画”作为其上海新空间的开幕展览。

常驻纽约的奥斯汀·李，擅于运用传统绘画将生活经历具象化，并由此获得国际关注。创作时，李首先在iPad上打底稿，再将这些独特的图像用喷枪和传统绘画技法转化为油画和素描。最终的构图体现了由手与数码，肉体与计算机演绎出的微妙变化，而这种变化恰巧体现了我们当下的时代。李的那些卡通式人物，渲染后外形抽象、浮肿，轮廓线条锋利，感觉幽默而诡异，熟悉而异域。他们是承载着艺术家潜在思想的衍生品，是对现实世界和那些日常、奇幻的画面世界的无尽联想。李通过应用滤镜和清晰的图像塑造出了一种将世界可视化的全新方法，从而使人的精神非但没有休憩，反而积极地发挥了驯化数码的作用。

“光的绘画”集中展出了奥斯汀·李最新的绘画作品和3D打印雕塑作品。“光”指代的是长久以来对其形式描绘的境遇，即在二维平面创造光的幻觉。从卡拉瓦乔的明暗对比到罗斯科的小教堂绘画作品，对光的重现自该学科成立以来就令无数画家着迷而困惑。对李来说，光并不是特纳所热情宣扬的“上帝的精神化身”，而是触屏技术下幽幽的电子光，而这种光已成为了我们信息时代的救赎之灯。在这些作品中，常规的事物被非常态的光所渲染——它并不只是照亮物体，而是从内部去点亮，正如我们的电子屏幕。“Light”不仅指设备的光，同时也指消费文化及其过度倾向的解毒剂：淡烟、低糖碳酸饮料、轻音乐等。 “光的绘画”（同时也是“轻的绘画”）更容易被理解，被“喜欢”，它们比较清淡，能自在地表达肤浅的深刻。
 
奥斯汀·李（1983年出生）工作生活于纽约。他从泰勒艺术学院获得学士学位，耶鲁大学艺术学院获得硕士学位。此后他在美国和欧洲数次举办个展。他的作品曾参与北京M WOODS美术馆2015年的“险怪：绘画的普世性”展览；也曾展出于伦敦泰特现代美术馆；目前，其作品正展出于温哥华美术馆由村上隆策展的“Juxtapoz x Superflat”展览。他的创作曾被村上隆，彼得·索尔和玛丽莲·明特等艺术家钦点、受邀参展，被Art in America，ARTnews，纽约时报，艺术界， Time Out 纽约和伦敦，纽约观察者，Hyperallergic，Black Book，Kaleidoscope Magazine，旁观者，以及 Rhizome报道。