Michelle Jane Lee spent her childhood in Seoul, Korea, lived and studied in Chicago, IL and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Michelle Jane Lee’s art is minimalist in form yet muscular in content. There is a complexity, density; to put it simply, there is a lot of heart in her often times sparse drawings and paintings. Her pieces require both imagination and sophistication, because if you look away too quickly, you are going to miss it. Always the clever child, she makes you pay attention; she makes you work for it. At once it is about the intricate, clean line work, as well the large canvases and bold colors. Like a kid in the sandbox with limitless imagination, she builds, telling us stories with images because language fails here (there is no script), showing us a myriad of ways to be and belong in the world. She is about going back to the moment of childhood possibility before our imaginations become impoverished and our options seemingly circumscribed. Her work reminds us that things do not have to be this way, that things could be different, if only we are brave enough to embrace the free fall, letting go of all of our prosthetics that keep us from realizing our freedom.
2005 Yale University, Yale/Norfolk Art Residency
2006 School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2006 Tulip Gallery, Chicago, IL
2005 Yale Norfolk Gallery, Norfolk, CT
2007 Queerfest Midwest, Chicago, IL
2008 Lasso Gallery, Chicago, IL
2010 The Purple Pineapple Project, Los Angeles, CA