Lee Wen is a contemporary Singapore artist who is well-known for his work inperformance art. His performances are deeply engaged in the social and political complexities of the region. This is exemplified in perhaps his most famous series, “Journey of a Yellow Man”, in which he painted his body with yellow paint, a symbolic reference to his ethnic identity.

In May, iPRECIATION is presenting a solo exhibition of Lee Wen’s works at Art Basel Hong Kong 2014. This exhibition will feature some of Lee Wen’s most important works, including selected photographs from his ’Journey of a Yellow Man series, ‘Splash!’, ‘Strange Fruit’, acrylic on canvas body prints from ‘Anthropometry Revision’, as well as recent works including selected drawings and ’Yellow on Yellow: Dreamboat’, which is especially made for this exhibition. Most of the photographs have been reprinted as museum-quality, fine art prints for this exhibition.

Lee Wen’s ’Ping Pong Go-Round’, a donut-shaped ping pong table, will be exhibited at Encounters, which is a curated sector featuring 17 ambitious, large-scale installation works.

Lee Wen (b. 1957) is a Singaporean multidisciplinary artist working on social identity themes. After leaving a banking career to enroll at LASALLE College of the Arts, Lee graduated with a Masters of Fine Art in 2006. Lee Wen is a member of The Artists Village and the Black Market performance collective. He was co-organizer of Future of Imagination, an international performance art event in 2003, and also initiated R.I.T.E.S.-Rooted in the Ephemeral Speak, a platform to develop and promote performance art, discourse, and discussion in Singapore in 2009. He has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in various international group shows, biennales and festival. He was the recipient of Singapore’s Cultural Medallion in 2005. Lee Wen has exhibited widely, with his most recent solo exhibition “The Breath of a Blade” at the Jendela Visual Arts Space Esplanade, Singapore in 2013 as well as “Lee Wen: Lucid Dreams in the Reverie of the Real” by the Singapore Art Museum in 2012.

-iPRECIATION

Image: © Lee Wen
Courtesy of the artist and iPRECIATION