Exploring what painting is and its relevance to contemporary art is core to Jane Lee’s practice. Trained in the classical style of painting, her exploration of the medium is as much art historical as it is personal. For the artist, the search for the nature of painting is also a seeking of her own identity, which is shaped by her experiences and influences living and working in Southeast Asia.
Lee’s works are richly layered, highly tactile canvases, which reflect her experiments with materials and techniques inspired by everyday gestures (cutting, washing, rolling, scooping, etc.), common items (piping bags, scrapers, syringes, etc.) as well as the characteristics and properties of the basic components of painting (canvas, stretcher, paint).
Spontaneity, chance and play underpin Lee’s painting process.
Canvases and built-up layers of paint are allowed to fall off, be torn off, droop to the ground or pierce through walls, extending the space of painting to its immediate surroundings.
Lila: Unending Play by Jane Lee expands the possibility of what an exhibition of painting could be and embodies playfulness, not just in the works themselves but in the spatial relationship between the viewer and the works. The exhibition continues Lee’s exploration of what painting is and could be: as surface, object, body or interplay of spaces and sensations.
