Joyce Y-J Lee

Bio

Joyce Yu-Jean Lee hails from Dallas and earned a MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010 and a BA in Communications from University of Pennsylvania in 2002. She is the recipient of the 2010 Henry Walters Traveling Scholarship to The Netherlands and Germany, a Joan Mitchell Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center and a residency at the Blue Sky Project. Prior to her MFA, Joyce worked as the programming and art director for nonprofit arts organization, International Arts Movement in New York City. Joyce creates “projection paintings” that reframe art historical depictions of illumination through a synthesis of drawing, performance and architectural video installation. She resides with her turtle, Biddy, and enjoys cruising around Baltimore on her 1979 Puch moped.

Artist Statement

“Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.” – James Turrell

I ask how artists and societies have historically depicted illumination and how my own search intersects this. My studio inquiry comprises an interdisciplinary approach to create “projection paintings.” These projection paintings examine pictorial space in a three-dimensional environment through green-screen video, drawing, performance and architectural video installation. I actively draw upon the history of painting, film and video in order to reframe it in alternative contexts. I am curious about how the act of seeing today is transformed by technology. My work challenges viewers to slow down observation by blurring the ways through which we consume visual information. Through this slowing down, viewers can revisit iconic works of art and take away new meaning, reflect on their own visual consumption, and enjoy new found space in their seeing.