Lee Kit
A small sound in your head | S.M.A.K., Ghent
28 May - 4 September 2016
Lee Kit (1978, Hong Kong; has lived and worked in Taipei since 2012) is one of the most important artists currently at work in Asia. His exhibition unfolds spatially in the form of an in-situ installation consisting of, among other things, paintings, projections, text, carpet, furniture, curtains, walls, daylight and museum architecture.
The artist describes his exhibitions as three-dimensional paintings in which the effect of light, perspective depth and composition are major parameters. Projection and daylight contribute substantially to the fluid nature of his work. Lee Kit’s ‘situations’, the term he often applies to his installations, appeal to our basic emotions and explore the no man’s land between things and their representation, between what is private and what public, and between the personal and the collective.
Starting from the precarious political situation in his native city of Hong Kong, Lee Kit’s work critiques the pursuit of efficiency in our fast-paced capitalist society. His installations make use of everyday things to form the ultimate opposite of this society: by making us experience time at a slower pace and by incorporating mass-produced articles for the promise of intimacy they imply. At the same time, Lee Kit’s practice reflects the life of the artist in the hybrid Asian-European culture and the conflicting patterns of Eastern and Western thinking that converge in it.
A small sound in your head is Lee’s first institutional solo show in Europe and is being held parallel to his first museum exhibition in the US, Hold your breath, dance slowly at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
On the occasion of Lee Kit’s exhibitions at S.M.A.K. and the Walker Art Center, a book is being published in collaboration with Koenig Books, London. It contains contributions by Anthony Young, Hu Fang, Martin Germann and Philippe van Cauteren, as well as a conversation between the artist, Misa Jeffereis and Olga Viso. The book is designed by Kim Beirnaert (Ghent) and edited by Martin Germann.
