Austin Lee shares feelings and art in solo exhibit 'Passing Time'

Austin Lee's solo exhibition, "Passing Time," explores the artist's complex emotions during the pandemic through his colorful paintings, sculptures, and videos. The exhibit, blending digital and traditional techniques, is on display in Seoul.

Austin Lee [LOTTE MUSEUM OF ART]

Times were not easy for Austin Lee during the pandemic, despite being able to create colorful blobs of characters for his paintings, sculptures and videos.

With his first solo exhibition in Korea, the 40-year-old American artist dives into the complex feelings he had during that time, especially in isolation. Titled “Passing Time,” the exhibit continues until the end of this year at the Lotte Museum of Art in Songpa District, southern Seoul.

As a painter, he is known for combining digital techniques with traditional methods. After realizing his ideas using digital drawing, he would airbrush them onto a canvas or use 3-D printing to turn them into sculptures.

To Lee, digital tools are “natural, newer ways to experiment and express myself in paintings.”

The latest work for this show, “Fountain,” is one example. An artist, with a paintbrush and palette on each hand, lies “lethargically” on its back and spouts water from its mouth. It’s actually a physical representation of his painting “Specular Reflection” (2020), which was easily recreated with the technologies Lee uses.

″Fountain″ by Austin Lee [LOTTE MUSEUM OF ART]

“It started out as a space where I could experiment infinitely,” Lee said during a press preview at the museum in September. “Psychologically, when you’re drawing on paper, you run out, and it feels like a limit. But when I do digital drawings, I do like a thousand drawings at once.”

The advantage of being able to work freely “from a subconscious place” allows him to revisit and investigate the digital drawings later, edit and actually create something out of that.

Lee also experiments with videos, as they help show how people experience time differently.

“In a painting, the viewer can look at it for like 30 seconds or an hour,” Lee explained, whereas “an animation is like a film, where it sets the time for someone.”

Despite his works being distinctly colorful and eliciting feelings of joy, their lumpy distorted appearances can seem almost disturbing at times.

″Flower Hill″ by Austin Lee [LOTTE MUSEUM OF ART]

Another new piece, “Flower Hill,” a video animation of bashful human-like flowers swaying together on a grassy hill from sun up till sun down, is about the sadness of time passing but also the anticipation of the coming new year, Lee said.

“Cry Baby” (2021), a painting of a crying boxer, an ode to Lee’s own experience as an amateur boxer in high school, is also ambivalent in that it seems both like a boxer crying tears of joy after winning a match, or at the same time floundering with the sorrow of defeat in a pool of tears.

″Cry Baby″ (2021) by Austin Lee [LOTTE MUSEUM OF ART]

In the end, to Lee, “it’s about sharing” experiences with one another through art.

“It’s just about making it and putting it out in the world and figuring out what it is,” he said. “Maybe some will connect with it or some won’t, but it’s O.K.; There’s no specific goal behind it.”

“Passing Time” continues until Dec. 31. The Lotte Museum of Art is open from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day. Tickets are 20,000 won ($14) for adults.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]