LEELEE CHAN

Leelee Chan’s sculptures reflect her experience with the extreme urbanisation in Hong Kong and are almost always comprised of dumpster detritus household ephemera, and mundane objects from her daily life not generally considered memorable or worth preserving. Derived from an impulse to interrogate these objects’ status and value, Chan imaginatively explores their transformative potential and reconfigures each item according to its unique quality. She purposefully integrates these objects with natural and industrial elements such as mother of pearl tiles and seashells, artificial plants and greenery, asphalt and rocks, while preserving each material’s open dignity. Her sculptures evoke Modernist architecture and anthropomorphic shapes embedded with playful and meticulous details that slowly unfold upon close inspection. Chan’s process-based approach embraces unexpected forms that generate a new living entity driven by their own internal logic–poetic, idiosyncratic, and universally intimate.