A few weeks ago, before the doors opened for the second day of the Armory Show, we tucked ourselves on a quiet mezzanine to complete our last in a series of three podcasts from the revered art fair. The mood in the city was beginning to take shape: the Coronavirus began to dominate every discussion, and yet in this early morning, we were able to sit down with NYC-based painter/sculpture artist, Austin Lee, long a friend of the magazine and celebrating a solo booth with Jeffrey Deitch in the pier down the hall from us.
We've known Austin for years: he's been featured in the magazine and also a major part of our Juxtapoz x Superflat exhibitions in Seattle and Vancouver with Takashi Murakami. His highly intricate-yet-appearing-lo-fi works have always astounded us. They feel so original and yet so playful, a tad sinister and loose. But we learn over the course of this conversation with Radio Juxtapoz, is that these works are time-consuming, polished and rely heavy on a special technique that Austin has been perfecting for years. These paintings and sculptures show what a generation of artists inspired by early digital technologies such as iPaint, Paintbrush or other applications of the late 1990s and early 2000s have come to create in a contemporary art context. What we love from this conversation is just how excited Austin has been, from his years at Yale to the present, with the use of technology and exploration in his practice.
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The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 041 was recorded live in New York City at Pier 90, March 6, 2020. Thank you to The Armory Show for the support.
