Austin Lee (born 1983) is an American artist based in New York. Lee's airbrush paintings often combine digital technologies with traditional media. He also works in sculpture and video.

Early life and education

Lee was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, and raised in Philadelphia. He received an MFA in painting from

Yale School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, paint ...

in 2013 and a BFA in painting from

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is based at Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate students in a wid ...

in 2006. While a student at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Lee's studio doubled as a gallery space where he organized group and solo exhibitions to promote his artistic community. After attending Yale for his MFA, Lee moved to New York in 2013.

Work

Lee once defined himself "a computer nerd as well as an artist." The use of digital platforms and technologies offer him the opportunity to work against the tradition of painting: Lee transitioned from using

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in ras ...

in his early work to adopting the

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, a ...

's virtual-reality program Medium as an imaginary studio. He then transfers the V.R. drawings to the canvas through the use of the airbrush and the paintbrush. As a result of this technique, the final paintings are very luminous and evoke both the light of a computer screen and the intense coloration of color field painting. Lee investigates how different types of human gestures and touch – both digitally rendered and organic – can affect viewers. The artist sources his subjects from his daily life: people who attract his attention on the subway or the internet, scenes of ordinary activities, animals, and flowers. Many of Lee's works evoke the emojis that have become part of everyday conversation. However, by confronting the viewer with familiar images, his works explore the dichotomy of contemporary phenomena, such as social media, that carry both positive and negative effects. Further exploiting the possibilities offered by the world of V.R., Lee has also created a series of sculptures that give form to his digital drawings with the use of a

3D printer 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

. While at first glance, the subjects of these sculptures appear joyful and soothing, the distortions of forms attribute a disturbing note to their flashy cheerfulness. Lee's work entertains a dialogue with the work of artists from older generations. While the effortlessness of

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who h ...

's paintings has certainly influenced him, the use of new technology in

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

's iPad Drawings and

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

's Instagram self-portraits likewise resonates in Lee's works. Art critic Will Heinrich at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' affirmed, “Austin Lee's analog portraits of cyberspace are strangely fascinating."

Jeffrey Deitch Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)L.A.'s MOCA picks art dealer Jeffrey Deitch as director'' Los Angeles Times''. born 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projec ...

has compared Lee's practice to Pop Art, “As Andy Warhol used photo silkscreens to connect painting with the image-making technologies of the 1960s, Lee fuses digital techniques with traditional painting and sculptural processes to create totally contemporary works of art."

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

*''Human Nature'', M WOODS Museum, Beijing, 2022 *''American Psyche'', Austin Lee & Mark Thomas Gibson, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2021 *''Paradise'', Carl Kostyál in collaboration with KALEIDOSCOPE, Spazio Maiocchi, Milan, Italy, 2019 *''Feels Good,''

, New York City, 2019 *''Constant Joy,'' Mosaic Art Foundation, Istanbul, 2019 *''Tomato Can'', Peres Projects, Berlin, 2018 *''Serious Works'',

Kaikai Kiki is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts media (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts as well as co aest ...

, Tokyo, 2017 *''Light Paintings'', BANK, Shanghai, 2016 *''Anxiety'', New Galerie, Paris, 2016 *''Nothing Personal'', Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2015 *''NO FAIR'', Isbrytaren, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2015 *''Me Art'', Kaleidoscope, Milan, 2015 *''Mixed Feelings'', Carl Kostyál, London, 2014 *''OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK'', Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2014

Selected group exhibitions

* ''Punch, Curated by Nina Chanel Abney,'' Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, 2019 * ''Punch'', ''Curated by Nina Chanel Abney,'' Jeffrey Deitch, New York, 2018 *''Summer Show'', Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2017 * ''The Second Self'', Peres Projects, Berlin, 2017 *''For Pete’s Sake'', Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2016 * ''Full of Peril and Weirdness: Painting as a Universalism'', M Woods, Beijing, 2015

References

External links

Interview in WWD

Interview in Cool Hunting

Interview in Office Magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Austin American male artists Artists from Nevada Temple University Tyler School of Art alumni Yale School of Art alumni People from Las Vegas Date of birth missing (living people) Living people 1983 births