THE MISSIONis pleased to presentUnoriginal sublime, an exhibition of paintings by Sarah Lee in THE OFFICE. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 23 from 6:00 to 8:00pm. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, August 5, 2017.
Sarah Lee is fascinated with the uncanny atmosphere of virtual reality and the aesthetics of a digitally constructed image. In her paintings, Lee employs elements of artificiality—extreme smoothness, unnatural coloring, and homogeneity of surface detail. Although the surfaces she renders are not plausible worlds, they are seductive—and more importantly—they are believable.
Lee’s practice investigates the aesthetic sensibility as a phenomenon looking at its relationship to the language of painting, especially when considering mark making. Lee’s approach to this language is driven by a thirst for unattainable originality in a digitally perfected world and where gestural marks allude to human presence as a heritage of abstract expressionism. Lee flattens and refines her gestural marks by sanding, masking, and spraying. Through these actions that have become a ritual for that phenomenal desire, Lee makes an image that was once static, otherworldly, and yet, still familiar.
SARAH LEE(b. 1988)received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recently graduated with her MFA from the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has recently exhibited a solo exhibition,Playing the field,in Gallery Won (Seoul, South Korea) and in a group exhibition,Repetition, at HERR (Seoul, South Korea).Unoriginal sublimeis Lee’s first exhibition at THE MISSION. She lives and works in Chicago, IL.
Sarah Lee is fascinated with the uncanny atmosphere of virtual reality and the aesthetics of a digitally constructed image. In her paintings, Lee employs elements of artificiality—extreme smoothness, unnatural coloring, and homogeneity of surface detail. Although the surfaces she renders are not plausible worlds, they are seductive—and more importantly—they are believable.
Lee’s practice investigates the aesthetic sensibility as a phenomenon looking at its relationship to the language of painting, especially when considering mark making. Lee’s approach to this language is driven by a thirst for unattainable originality in a digitally perfected world and where gestural marks allude to human presence as a heritage of abstract expressionism. Lee flattens and refines her gestural marks by sanding, masking, and spraying. Through these actions that have become a ritual for that phenomenal desire, Lee makes an image that was once static, otherworldly, and yet, still familiar.
SARAH LEE(b. 1988)received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recently graduated with her MFA from the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has recently exhibited a solo exhibition,Playing the field,in Gallery Won (Seoul, South Korea) and in a group exhibition,Repetition, at HERR (Seoul, South Korea).Unoriginal sublimeis Lee’s first exhibition at THE MISSION. She lives and works in Chicago, IL.
