Austin Lee has always been ahead of the curve, even though his work looks like a return to our most innocent like impulses. It's tech but it's not, it's digital but also handmade. When we spoke with Austin on the Radio Juxtapoz podcast, just two years ago when the world was about to stop in it's tracks, he talked about a love for computers and making art with the influence of digital technologies, and this particular exhibition, Human Nature, on view at the M Woods space in Beijing, China, feels like the perfect amalgamation of his career to date.
As M Woods notes, "Conceived with exhibition curator Victor Wang during a period of isolation and solitude, the exhibition focuses on emotion, growth, and feelings as fundamental themes in Lee’s work. Moreover, a range of feelings and colors guide the layout of each room, together with correlating symbols designed by the artist, to further communicate Lee’s ideas of connectivity." In so many ways, Lee is the artist for these times, a rawness with technical precision. He keeps pushing our traditional ideas of how paintings and sculptures can be made, and the energy is palpable. —Evan Pricco