Even though this show just came down over the weekend, we wanted to share the new works of one of our favorites painters, Rhys Lee.
In November and December 2023, Alice Gallery gave the first solo exhibition of Australian artist Rhys Lee (1975) in Belgium. The boxer takes the spotlight in the new series of artworks to be discovered. He symbolizes the virtue of tenacity in the face of adversity, a fitting metaphor to depict the ordinary struggle of some. The other depicted characters also strike a pose before the painter with a certain theatricality. The uniqueness of Rhys Lee’s brushstroke is striking: Intense oil colors compose the painting with wild energy. One instantly thinks of the expressionist style. And while, as with all works, the temptation is great to perceive a touch of Picasso’s genius in one or the impetuosity of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in another, in the end, Rhys Lee delivers the knockout blow. The austral pictorial expressionism has already caught the eye of some Brussels residents in recent years through collective exhibitions at the gallery or the one on anthropomorphism in 2020 at MIMA called ZOO.
