Grand prize winner of the 14th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh in 2010, South Korean artist Gil Woo Lee presents New York State of Mind, his first U.S. solo exhibition at White Box in the Lower East Side. Featuring pop culture icons like Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson, and Audrey Hepburn, Lee's paintings address "western materialism, celebrity worship, and commercialism on one hand and an older Asian ideal of spirituality, contemplation and love of nature on the other," (from show's press release).
Lee creates "screens" by burning holes into sheets of Korean Hanji paper with incense and layers them to produce paintings with overlapping images that allow "the viewer to see one image through the other and give form to a lens of multiplicity that captures contemporary global visual culture." For New York State of Mind, the artist merged images referencing New York City like the Manhattan skyline, Warhol, and Mayor Bloomberg with dancing figures of Michael Jackson and traditional Korean dancers. The dancing imagery references the Taoist phoilosophy that "it is our human nature to dance" (who knew Taoists were such partyers?!).
Lee, a Professor of Art at Chung-Ang University in South Korea, mentions in his artist statement—"I try to show profiles of the modern time of 'cosmopolitanism,' where multi-cultures coexist beyond the collision of eastern and western cultures..." The warm, orange-tone, dotted images of cityscapes and iconic figures "dissolve" into one another in a blur of Lee's "ideas about the fusion of cultures." Learn more at whiteboxny.org and at the aritst's website gilwoolee.com. Through February 27th.
Dance in Nature III
Manhattan (Grand)
Manhattan Michael Jackson
Dance in Nature Michael Jackson III
Dance in Nature II
Clockwise from top left: Children series: "Dreams" IV; Children series: "Dreams" 1; Children series: "Dreams" II; Children series: "Dreams" III
Children series: "Dreams" II, close-up
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