Postmasters is pleased to present a show of paintings by Austin Lee, the artist's first solo exhibition after receiving MFA from Yale University in 2013. The exhibition is titled OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK.

Painting is a strange thing to do but so is everything else. - Austin Lee

Austin Lee's paintings are familiar, yet strange, otherworldly, yet immersive. While they are often figurative, there is a level of abstraction that takes the simplest and most recognizable of forms into another space, disassociated from the tangible. We find ourselves looking at figures, shapes, and colors that hover between the opposing forces from which they are brought forth, namely, the physical and the digital, representative and abstract, graphical and human. These binaries become fluid through the contrasting qualities that comprise Lee's paintings: stark and supple, opaque and lucid, stable and fleeting.

Lee often begins his process by using an iPad to make digital drawings. Drawing, perhaps one of the quickest ways for an artist to translate a thought into something visual, is made almost immediate by sketching with the iPad. Drawing and erasing become swiping and undoing, enabling the ability to endlessly render and alter images. This method of working is inherently more visceral than analog drawing techniques, in that the hand is actually freer, unrestrained, and spontaneous, yielding entirely expressive results from what seem to be the simplest of lines. Mistakes, chance, and the accidental thus become central to Lee's playful and curious explorations on and through the screen, and subsequently on canvas.

Lee's paintings exhibit these very qualities, as he translates the uninhibited and intuitive process of gestural mark-making from one media to another. Both modes of working capture the quickness and impulsiveness of his movements; yet painting instills the process with slowness, facilitating moments of reflection and self-awareness, while at the same time opening up another channel for exploring the intentional and the incidental.

Postmasters Gallery
54 Franklin Street
New York (NY) 10013 United States
Tel. +1 (212) 727 3323
postmasters@thing.net
www.postmastersart.com

Opening hours
Tuesday - Saturday from 11am to 6pm
Thursday from 11am to 8pm

Related images

  1. Austin Lee, Taboo, 2013, flashe acrylic on canvas, 84 x 64 inches
  2. Austin Lee, Yolo, 2013, flashe acrylic on canvas, 50 x 45.5 inches
  3. Austin Lee, Excremental, 2013, flashe acrylic on canvas, 90 x 66 inches
  4. Austin Lee, Mr. Worry, 2013, flashe acrylic on canvas, 49.5 x 49.5 inches
  5. Austin Lee, Brain Waves
  6. Austin Lee, :(, 2013, flashe acrylic on canvas, 84 x 60 inches