leemaelee-New Variations on Minimal and Architectonic Art, Robert C. M…

Lee Mae Lee:
New Variations on Minimal and Architectonic Art

Robert C. Morgan

Lee Mae Lee is interested in video and in Minimal architectonic forms.  She uses the surface of modular, stacked plywood boxes as a screen on which to project video images.  Her projections began three years ago with close-up images of earth and rock, which eventually led to the use of systemically repeated words (in English) such as “communication.” In the latter case, the word appears in several permutations as a word-block, always projected against the surface of a slightly uneven stack of plywood boxes.  Sometimes the word-block will move sideways, then diagonally, and sometimes up and down.  Unexpectedly, a projected image of a high-heeled shoe may tumble through the words as if to break-up the monotony and surprise the viewer. 

In these Minimal constructions, Lee Mae Lee is not simply giving the viewer a visual exercise.  Rather she is elucidating the possibility of a new kind of symbolic code through the use of Minimal form and architectonic imagery. Her stacked Minimal boxes covered with digital light suggest a hybrid between language and image, or a gap between the Informational Age and the material fetish. Her appropriation of Minimal art and video (DVD projection) further suggests a kind of installation art. Kinetic movement accompanies the static placement of architecture, just as the neutral dimension of information may suggest the sublimation of Eros.

One can trace this work by Lee. Mae Lee back to an earlier work on plywood called “Land for Drawing” from 2001.  It is a simple Minimal work in which a quadrant of four squares is laminated against a larger horizontal rectangular sheet of plywood.  The surface is painted a uniform color with dribbles of paint in the style of American “action painting.”  In addition, there is an indeterminate series of roughly etched marks and incised lines cut into the surface that function semiotically as a visual complement to the dribbles of paint.  The paint and the etched marks interact metonymically on the same level, and thereby, intensify one another. At the outset, Lee Mae Lee understood “Land of Drawing” in terms of painting, but eventually this flat planar work became a passage towards something else -- a transition from painting to sculpture.  It was here that Lee Mae Lee quickly perceived the possibility of working not only in three-dimensional space, but also with time.

Since 2005, the artist has been involved in a new series of work – another application of Minimal architectonic form – through the use of painted aluminum panels.  Entitled “Unconscious,” these works may include a diagonal panel, painted in a different color, inserted over the top or wrapped around the sides of three vertical aluminum-painted panels.  In one case, the work functions in direct relation to architectural space as two panels are placed next to a third on an adjacent wall.  In another version, a triptych is accompanied by a diagonal ramp on the right side with a group of cast high-heeled shoes descending towards the triptych.  The absurd humor of this piece holds a certain irony, as signs of the secular and sacred world seem to collide upon one another.

In each of these groups of work, Lee Mae Lee is searching to extend the application of Minimal art through a broadening of its vocabulary.  She is giving Minimal art another context for viewing and another possibility for interpretation.  The use of an architectonic context in her work suggests that the artist is thinking of form not only in terms of meaning and deconstruction but also in terms of transition between art and architecture. While interested in decoding certain assumptions about Minimal art regarding its male gender specificity, she is also deconstructing the logotypical relationship of Minimal art to corporate globalism.  On this level, Lee Mae Lee appears to be questioning the very foundation of art’s ability to communicate beyond the marketplace of signs.

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Robert C. Morgan, Ph.D. resides in New York where he functions as an art historian, curator, artist, and international art critic. In the Fall 2005, he was a Fulbright fellow at Chosen University.  His book, “Art into Ideas” (Cambridge University Press), is being translated and updated into a Korean edition, available in late 2007.