Entertaining, informative, perplexing and amusing are among the some ways to explain the art work of Austin Lee. The identical could be mentioned when observing the web. It could make sense then that the 2 had been birthed in the identical 12 months.
Born in Las Vegas in 1983 and now primarily based in Brooklyn, Lee’s observe floats between digital applied sciences and conventional painterly means. Whereas it might be regular these days for artists to bypass utilizing a pencil and paper for preliminary sketches, Lee has nearly at all times mapped out his ideas by means of the pc. Not reserved to anybody desire, he seeks “to carry out the perfect in every” medium he works with.
These days, Lee frequently makes use of AR and VR to construct the enigmatic worlds his characters function in after which reverts to airbrush and conventional painterly methods to carry them to life on canvas. His aesthetic, although troublesome to pinpoint, seems someplace in between the allure of Nintendo 64 graphics and a dystopian future, the place horses, flowers and humanoid figures mix inside a chromatic void. “There may be at all times a deep unhappiness across the nook. I don’t put that within the work on goal however it’s a part of who I’m and comes out in unconscious methods,” Lee tells Hypeart.
A pupil of historical past, Lee is conscious about how artwork is one steady story — from figures and intervals to motifs. His personal work is riddled with refined hints at love, nervousness and the joy and confusion ushered in by expertise. As it’s the case inside this text, Lee will certainly be one of many figures we rejoice sooner or later, a lot because the predecessors whom impressed him, as his work displays the edge we at present discover ourselves in. This ‘phygital’ world the place hope and uncertainty, unhappiness and ecstasy twirl round in Matisse-like vogue.
Having just lately showcased a number of main solo exhibitions, together with a present at Jeffrey Deitch in New York, the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia College, alongside together with his present present at Pace Prints, Hypeart caught up with Lee to debate his observe, how he develops his items and his ideas on the emergence of latest applied sciences, resembling AI.
