US-based Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei's exhibition Uncommon Senses opened at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in December 2008 and is on at this New Plymouth, New Zealand, venue, till 16 March 2009. For over a decade, Lee has worked to expand the terrain of ‘invitational aesthetics’ through his people-to-people participatory projects.
In this exhibition, curated by Gallery Director Rhana Devenport, Taiwan-born, New York-based Lee is presenting two projects "informed by qualities of hospitality and the nature of home." This occasion marks the first presentation of Lee’s work in New Zealand.
Govett-Brewster Director Rhana Devenport says generosity and conversation are at the heart of Lee’s work as he offers scenarios and environments in which objects become ciphers or gestures for experiencing memory and shared understanding.
“Lee Mingwei’s elegant and contemplative installations provide a stage for interpersonal exchange inspired by ordinary human events or activities. His participatory installations, such as The Living Room Project, offer a fresh and intimate avenue to find meaning within museums today and register a new kind of contemporary art-making.”
Through The Living Room Project (2000-2008), the Govett-Brewster is turned inside out. A relaxed space becomes temporary home for seldom-seen private collections to be revealed and shared. Each collector, drawn from throughout the wider Taranaki community, present their collection in the gallery for a two-week period. The collectors then become hosts or guides for a day as they share with visitors their passion for collecting and their chosen objects of personal or aesthetic value.
Lee’s second work, Nomad Exquisite (2008) is conceived for the Govett-Brewster and harnesses early twentieth century classical music, video, the natural world as metaphor for human behaviour, and the artist’s abiding interests in architectural space and Ch’an Buddhist aesthetics. The proportions of the room refer to Tadao Ando’s theory of a restrained aesthetic within architecture; a simple, meditative space for living. A hermit crab (decapod crustacean) dances into view, it inhabits a delicate discarded shell that becomes a temporary but ideal home.
Lee has exhibited in the US, Taiwan and Australia and has participated in the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Asian Contemporary Art Biennial, Echigo-Tsumari Triennial and Asia-Pacific Triennial. Currently, Lee is preparing for a solo exhibition at Edinburgh Festival 2009 and Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in 2009-2010.
In The Living Room Project: The Collectors, each of the collectors involved will be available to talk about their collection in The Living Room on the first Saturday of each of their two-week exhibitions.
Lee Mingwei: Uncommon Senses, 6 December 2008 to 16 March 2009, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ
