In 2006, Lee spent a semester in Brazil studying art and language. During her time abroad, she developed a distinct artistic practice and completed six paintings of Brazil, entitled “Exteriors.”
Lee’s process begins with the photographs she takes of her everyday surroundings. She isolates elements from the photographs, combining them to create a unique composition, which references but does not replicate the actual landscape. After applying a foundation of black spray paint to the paper, Lee uses red and blue transfer paper to trace the bones of her composition onto the surface. She then skillfully and selectively paints in the outlined composition, leaving visible traces of the initial layout.
The artist describes her work in technical terms, referencing triangulation – the determination of a point in space based on three known coordinates – to define the conceptual center of her art. For Lee, those coordinates are traditional painting, media literacy and contemporary cultural signifiers. While her work is far from message-driven, Lee describes much of her work as evoking “the uncomfortably unspoken implications of a society that so myopically views the significance of its surroundings.”
Lee has been featured as a young, up-and-coming artist in publications such as Smithsonian Magazine, which recognized her as one of several contemporary artists reinvigorating the art of painting by “reaching back to the roots of modern art to find new modes of expression.”
Lee was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1984, grew up in the rural Midwest and now lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her B.F.A. in 2008 from the College of Santa Fe.
Katherine Lee's second solo show at Eight Modern, following last year's exhibition of her "Brazil Series" paintings, reflects a significant change in the work of the versatile 25-year-old artist. The 31 drawings that comprise Animal Violence and Topless Women Eating Jam represent a significant departure from her painted works, not only in medium and style but in subject matter as well.
The studied mastery of her craft, the freshness of approach and the iconoclastic attitude towards artistic tropes that g ave the unpeopled environments of Lee's Exterior paintings such affective power are still present in her drawings. However, the works in Animal Violence are grotesque and messily visceral, purposefully perverse and imbued with a gruesome wit.
People are nothing if not violent and naked," Lee states. "I am of the belief that man will never be able to transcend these aspects of himself and thus perpetuates his own disappointment and doom in trying. Most of this work is based on the unhappy ending (you know - she dies, because she does, because life is like that). There is a beauty in embracing that horror." When asked about the origins of her exhibition title, Lee says "The pairing came about from two separate strings of association that collided at some point. Topless women eating jam are charming in a guilty kind of way. Animal violence was a phrase my brother used once, years ago, and since then I have never been able to get it out of my head." Whatever her inspirations, the artist has always openly disavowed interest in conveying messages."
A work is successful not because of what it's about but because of how it is executed," Lee says. "Nude women and violence don't really mean anything specific to me, but I recognize that as subject matter, they function as beauty and drama." A Santa Fe resident, Lee was born and raised in Iowa. She received her B.F.A. from the College of Santa Fe in 2008. Over the past six years, she has participated in numerous group shows and juried exhibitions.
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