 It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, Public Enemy, 1988, 2006 C-print, 60 x 75.6 inches each (152.4 x 192 cm) Tim Lee We are pleased to announce Tim Lee's second solo exhibition at the gallery. Tim operates within the loose confines of an artistic-social laboratory/studio experiment in order to offer a complex inquiry into the connection between highly charged socio-political movements and their transformative impact on the artistic avant-garde. With sources ranging from Alexander Rodchenko, Ad Reinhardt, Bruce Nauman and Public Enemy, the artist combines the templates of varying artistic entities into one cohesive body of work - including video, photography, sculpture and painting - in order to glean a greater (or askance) knowledge of each. In "Party For Your Right To Fight, Public Enemy", 1988, the artist simultaneously re-visits the conventions of early video art as practiced by Bruce Nauman in the late sixties, and Public Enemy's landmark hip-hop album "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" from 1988. Lee's two-channel video installation features the artist's head reciting the rap lyrics of Public Enemy while flipped upside-down and spinning in both clockwise and counter-clockwise directions as the camera records the performance in a stationary position. By actively re-engaging the strategies of one artist while immersed in the vicissitudes of another, the combination of two autonomies - classical conceptual art and radical black empowerment - flattens both philosophies in order to gain a deeper understanding of each. Accompanying the video is a large-scale two-sided mirror that features the title of the song. With the text appearing in transparent type within the reflective mirror, the entire structure is turned, flipped-over and reversed sideways so that the words appear to be illegible, thereby formally upending the promise of a social revolution. Born in Seoul, Korea in 1975, Tim Lee lives and works in Vancouver. His work is represented in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Canada; Collection de Arte Contemporanea Fundacion, Madrid; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; and Tate Modern, London. Recent exhibitions include "New Work/New Acquisitions", Museum of Modern Art, New York; "Intertidal", MuHKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium; and "Appearances", Musée d'art contemporain, Montréal. Upcoming projects include group exhibitions at Klosterfelde, Berlin, and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and a solo exhibition curated by Jens Hoffman at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 2007. Exhibition: March 31 - April 29, 2006 Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 10 am - 6 pm Cohan and Leslie 138 Tenth Avenue USA-New York, NY 10011 Telephone +1 212 206.8710 Fax +1 212 206.8711 Email info@cohanandleslie.com www.cohanandleslie.com |
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