Lila: Unending Play by Jane Lee

Journey with Jane Lee on her unending quest to discover play and spontaneity in paintings

Exploring what painting is and its relevance to contemporary art is core to Jane Lee’s practice. Trained in the classical style of painting, her exploration of the medium is as much art historical as it is personal. For the artist, the search for the nature of painting is also a seeking of her own identity, which is shaped by her experiences and influences living and working in Southeast Asia.

Lee’s works are richly layered, highly tactile canvases, which reflect her experiments with materials and techniques inspired by everyday gestures (cutting, washing, rolling, scooping, etc.), common items (piping bags, scrapers, syringes, etc.) as well as the characteristics and properties of the basic components of painting (canvas, stretcher, paint).

Spontaneity, chance and play underpin Lee’s painting process.

Canvases and built-up layers of paint are allowed to fall off, be torn off, droop to the ground or pierce through walls, extending the space of painting to its immediate surroundings.

Lila: Unending Play by Jane Lee expands the possibility of what an exhibition of painting could be and embodies playfulness, not just in the works themselves but in the spatial relationship between the viewer and the works. The exhibition continues Lee’s exploration of what painting is and could be: as surface, object, body or interplay of spaces and sensations.

Image credit: Courtesy of Yogya Art Lab


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about the artist

Jane Lee is best known for her material and conceptual explorations of the practice of painting. Her works are often richly layered and possess physical and visual heft, making them akin to sculpture. Moving beyond the usual painterly gestures and tools, everyday movements and processes are embodied in her works. Many of her paintings seem to be in motion: they fall, unroll, hang or slide. To Lee, painting comprises not only of paint applied on surfaces and within defined edges but also what permeates into the space surrounding it. This interest in the spatiality of painting has led her to experiment with new materials of painting, including clay, cement and stainless steel.

artworks

Lila (The Ultimate Play)

Jane Lee

Hollow and Empty

Jane Lee

In Praise of Darkness

Jane Lee

Status

Jane Lee

Collection of Singapore Art Museum

The Object I

Jane Lee

Collection of Singapore Art Museum

The Object II

Jane Lee

Collection of Singapore Art Museum

Fetish - White II

Jane Lee

Istana Art Collection