Pure Painting: Lee Wells

Pure Painting: New Work by Lee Wells
Curated by Michaeline Sander

The Yard Flat Iron North

 

Lee Wells presents a new series of colorful and dramatic abstract paintings at The Yard Flatiron North in collaboration with IFAC Arts. Influenced in part by the New York School and the writings of Paul Virillo’s handbook, Popular Defense & Ecological Struggles (Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series),1978/1990. The series investigates the act of painting and drawing in an attempt to supersede modernism and further the dialogue into 21st century painting. Formally, the paintings deviate from the concrete (ie. landscape, portrait, and still-life), and become the deterritorialized subject/object themselves. The series creates an unstable web of desire for the viewer to enter through, allowing them the opportunity to expand their field of perception and reflect back upon their own identity and place in society

Lee Wells is a conceptual artist, curator, and writer with studios in New York and Athens Greece. His work questions systems of power and control in society and continues to further the dialogue in the arts and the avant garde. His artwork and projects have been presented internationally, including The Guggenheim Museum, PS1/MoMA, NCCA Moscow, and 51st Venice Biennale, in addition to numerous institutions, festivals, art fairs, and commercial galleries. Wells is a co-founder of Perpetual Art Machine, the video art community portal project and director of IFAC Arts which he founded in 1996. Wells has been a member with the Yard Lower East Side since 2013 and has curated numbers exhibitions, artist talks, and facilitated commissions with The Yard Williamsburg, Lincoln Square, Flatiron North and Lower East Side.