Artist: Jennifer J. Lee
Exhibition title: Cold Turkey
Organized by: Lulu, Mexico City
Venue: LA MAISON DE RENDEZ-VOUS, Brussels, Belgium
Date: October 24 – December 14, 2019
Photography: Isabelle Arthuis / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Lulu and LA MAISON DE RENDEZ-VOUS, Brussels
Lulu is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the New York-based painter Jennifer J. Lee.
For her first solo exhibition in Europe, Lee presents a series of her signature, small-scale figurative paintings on jute. Drawing on the banality of image production as promulgated by the likes of instagram and the internet, the paintings feature everything from patterns to architectural motifs to serial forms which happen naturally in the world. Images are selected less by virtue of their quaint un-remarkableness than by their presumed optical depletion. It is almost as if they are rendered invisible by the sheer visibility vouchsafed them by the internet. Thanks to their depiction on stretched jute, Lee not only arrests and isolates them from the ceaseless flow of digital minutiae, but she also invests them with a striking texture and materiality while paradoxically challenging their integrity as recognizable objects. She does so through portraying them on the thick, open tooth of jute, which all but partially disintegrates the image, superficially pulling it apart and revealing its intrinsic fragility. As such these paintings enact a process that is both restorative and distressing, palpably affirming that which they marginally erase. It is a strange if paradoxical procedure that tellingly reflects on the nature of these things– images– which we often take for granted and which have nevertheless come to play such an important role in our everyday lives.
Jennifer J. Lee (b.1977) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include Day Trip at Klaus von Nichtssagend gallery, New York (2019) and Nowhere, print release and solo exhibition, Pressure Club, Philadelphia, PA. A selection of group exhibitions include, A Cloth Over a Birdcage, Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles; Double Play, The Pit with Leftfield Gallery, Los Angeles; Last Night I Wore a Costume, curated by Lisa Cooley, LX Gallery, NY; Flat Earth Society, Big Pictures Los Angeles, Los Angeles; The Views – Paintings of Windows, Fisher Parrish Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.
