Lee Kit Born in 1978 Hong Kong, China. He graduated from Chinese University of Hong Kong and now lives and works in Taipei. Lee Kit’s works range from painted fabrics, installations that enclose paintings, ready-made objects, video projections, to performative works that address seemingly ordinary daily rituals, concerned with redefining how we identify with the everyday. He has in recent years presented a wide range of works that aim to intertwine the boundaries between art and daily life, focusing on daily objects and ordinary practices. This is achieved by pieces that often generate multiple, contradictory narratives, transforming exhibition spaces and upstaging a tension between what is real and artificial, still and theatrical. Lee Kit’s novel environments are rendered through ready-made objects and the use of his signature cardboard-paintings. Merging with video-projections, they establish a silent dialogue amongst equals that adds a further dimension to the artist’s practice. Through a measured and subtle approach to his mediums, Lee Kit offers a model of resistance to constraint, be it existential, political or social. His intentionally mixed messages court intimacy and detachment differently suggesting the possibility that artistic practice and life merge in unexpected and transformative ways. His pieces can be understated and undemonstrative, but this modesty is nostalgic, lyrical and often surprisingly beautiful. His subject matter is inherently local–everyday life in Hong Kong, the need for memory, community and freedom, stimulating our perception of the reality and fantasy. His works are intuitive acts that encompass his reflection on his personal life as well as the impersonal surroundings, exploring feelings that are powerful because of their uncertainty. For the artist, he is not expressing an emotion but an attitude.
Read MoreHis selected solo exhibitions include recent show Linger on, your lit-up shade. Museo Casa Masaccio Centro perl’Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy, 2018; The Enormous Space: Lee Kit & Cui Jie Double Solo Exhibition, OCAT Shenzhen Museum, Shenzhen, China, 2018; The more I ignore you, the closer you get, The Cube Space, Taipei, Taiwan, 2017; I’ve been doing some thinking over these last few days, AIKE, Shanghai, China, 2016; _A small sound in your head’, S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium, 2016; Hold your breath, dance slowly, Burnet Gallery, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, 2016; And at AIKE, Shanghai, China, 2014; You, Cattle Depot Artist Village, Hong Kong, China, 2014; Every Breath You Take, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2012; A Suitcase at AIKE, Palermo, Italy, 2009. His selected group exhibitions include Interval in Space，NAIRS，Switzerland, 2017; All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2017; Jing Shen – The act of painting in contemporary China, PAC Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan, Italy, 2015; Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible, Sharjah, UAE, 2015; Kiev Biennial, Kiev, Ukraine, 2014; Hugo Boss Asia Art Award Finalists Exhibition, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2013; The Ungovernables, New Museum, New York, 2012; Print/Out, MoMA, New York, 2012; ‘What Should I Do To Live Your Life?, Sharjah Art Foundation, Beit al Serkal, UAE, 2012; 1 Degree of Separation, the Chinese Art Centre, Manchester, 2009; Sprout From White Night, Bonnier Kuntshall, Stockholm, 2008. He has been selected to represent Hong Kong at the 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2013; is the recipient of the Art Futures Award at ArtHK in 2012, and is also one of the seven artists shortlisted for the inaugural Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2013. Public Collections M+ Museum, Hong Kong, China Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium The Hong Kong Museum of Art , Hong Kong, China Private collection (Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and USA)
Text courtesy AIKE.
Ocula Report Lyon Biennale 2019: The Art of Dispersal By Tessa Moldan, Lyon 'The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.' This excerpt from a poem by American writer Raymond Carver is the somewhat florid departure for Là où les eaux se mêlent, the 15th Lyon Biennale (18 September 2019–5 January 2019)—a materially rich exhibition of works by around 50...
Ocula Conversation Lee Kit By Anna Dickie, Hong Kong The Lee Kit exhibition, You., shown recently the Cattle Depot Artist Village in Hong Kong, was an expanded adaptation of his solo presentation for Hong Kong at the 55th Venice Biennale. The Venice presentation, entitled You (you)., received international critical acclaim and Lee was touted by the Wall Street Journal as ‘one of the five...
Ocula Conversation Alan Lo Active in promoting art and design in Hong Kong, Alan Lo is the Chairman of Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, sits on the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and was a member of Art HK’s advisory group. Lo is also a co-founder and director of Hong Kong-based Press Room Group, owner and operator of various well-known restaurants and...
Related Press The Enormous Space 1 March 2018, ArtAsiaPacific In 1989, British author JG Ballard published The Enormous Space, a short story about Gerald Ballantyne, a man who withdraws from the world and fortifies himself in his abode, not due to agoraphobia but to 'experiment' with reducing his immediate environment to nothing but his house, committing what is in effect a slow suicide. OCAT Shenzhen's...
Related Press 10 Highlights from the inaugural Kathmandu Triennale 2017 10 April 2017, Art Radar Journal The Kathmandu Triennale is an event developed on the back of past success of the Kathmandu International Art Festival, held in 2009 and 2012. The inaugural edition of Kathmandu Triennale (KT 2017) takes ‘The City’ as a thematic starting point – a catalyst to explore the many socio-cultural and political issues embedded in urban settings. Francis...
Related Press Lee Kit at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 11 November 2016, Art in America “Who sees me naked, and who spends time alone with me in the bathroom? Johnson & Johnson. Nivea.” This is how Lee Kit, Hong Kong’s representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale, discusses the personal hygiene product logos in the paintings that unassumingly populated his Walker exhibition, Hold your breath, dance slowly : as...
Related Press Slowly dancing to an exhibition about love 24 August 2016, Hyperallergic MINNEAPOLIS — A kind of dance happens as you walk through Lee Kit’s exhibition at the Walker Art Center, appropriately titled Hold your breath, dance slowly. As you enter, there’s no sign that dictates whether you should walk right or left, but most people walk right, out of convention, and don’t see the ready–made...
