Exhibitions

Past
Image: Bulloch, Pryde
Hong Kong  6 November 2020 - 9 January 2021

Bulloch, Pryde Sky, Rocks & Digits

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present Sky, Rocks & Digits, a joint exhibition of works by Berlin-based artists Angela Bulloch and Josephine Pryde. Concerned with the interplay between bodies and technology, both artists explore the historic and ongoing significance of technological mediation and what that produces, enables or prohibits.

Image: Pedestrian Profanities
New York  29 October - 12 December 2020

Pedestrian Profanities Curated by Eric N. Mack

Simon Lee Gallery, New York is pleased to present Pedestrian Profanities, a group exhibition of interdisciplinary artists, designers and polymaths curated by Eric N. Mack, which explores the relationship between fine art, design and fashion, and the ways in which they are activated by a participating body. 

Image: Eric N. Mack
Online  28 October - 12 November 2020

Eric N. Mack Works on Paper

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present a selection of recent works on paper by Eric N. Mack to coincide with his curated group exhibition Pedestrian Profanities, currently on view at Simon Lee Gallery, New York. 

Image: Jim Shaw: Hope Against Hope
London  20 October 2020 - 16 January 2021

Jim Shaw: Hope Against Hope

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw, his first at the London gallery since 2016.  As the United States prepares for its upcoming Presidential election, Shaw is more analytical and daring than ever before in his satirical depictions and social commentary.

Image: William Mackinnon: Strive for the light
London  20 October - 8 December 2020

William Mackinnon: Strive for the light

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present Strive for the light, an exhibition of new paintings by Australian artist William Mackinnon, his first solo show in the UK. In this latest body of work, Mackinnon reflects on memories of trees in and around his family farm in western Victoria, and on formative experiences living in remote indigenous communities in the Kimberley region. Painted during a period of prolonged isolation as a result of lockdown, the symbol of the tree is imbued with a deep sense of longing for home, family, regrowth and regeneration. 

Image: Mai-Thu Perret: Flowers in the Eye
New York  15 September - 17 October 2020

Mai-Thu Perret: Flowers in the Eye

Simon Lee Gallery, New York is proud to present an exhibition of new ceramics and tapestries by Swiss artist, Mai-Thu Perret. This will be Perret’s fifth show with Simon Lee Gallery and her first at the New York space. 

Image: Marnie Weber: The Sea Witch and Other Stories
Hong Kong  11 September - 31 October 2020

Marnie Weber: The Sea Witch and Other Stories

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent works by Los Angeles-based artist Marnie Weber, her first solo show in Hong Kong. This exhibition coincides with the Busan Biennial, in which Weber is presenting a major installation that includes her new film, Song of the Sea Witch.

Image: Vasily Klyukin
London  9 - 30 September 2020

Vasily Klyukin Special Project

Simon Lee Gallery presents a special project in collaboration with Vasily Klyukin. Throughout his practice, which spans architecture, design, literature and sculpture, Klyukin has sought to eternalise the intangible. The Russian-born, Monaco-based artist is concerned with humanity and the natural world: patterns and systems found within nature, as well as human emotion and memory.

Image: Toby Ziegler: The sudden longing to collapse 30 years of distance
London  7 September - 14 October 2020

Toby Ziegler: The sudden longing to collapse 30 years of distance

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present The sudden longing to collapse 30 years of distance, Toby Ziegler’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, in which the artist explores the complex relationships between experience and memory, image and data, through the twin lens of figuration and abstraction.

Book a visit

Image: WORDS
London  10 July - 21 August 2020

WORDS

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present WORDS, a group exhibition that explores the function of language and the role of text in art making. Whether dealing in political statements, ribald asides, poetry and literature or illegible scrawls and scribbles, the works in this exhibition comment on the ways in which ideas are exchanged and communication effected. 

Image: Gary Simmons: Dancing In Darkness
Hong Kong  4 July - 29 August 2020

Gary Simmons: Dancing In Darkness

Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong is pleased to announce a presentation of new works by Gary Simmons, comprising drawings and a painting, which continue the artist’s ongoing exploration into the politics of race and identity through his signature ‘erasure drawings’. 

Image: Chris Huen Sin Kan: Puzzled Daydreams
London  15 June - 3 July 2020

Chris Huen Sin Kan: Puzzled Daydreams

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present Puzzled Daydreams, a solo exhibition by Hong Kong-based artist Chris Huen Sin Kan comprising, new paintings and works on paper. Huen’s largescale oil paintings are derived from observation of his own life, portraying quotidian experiences through a fresh set of aesthetic strategies that bring the domestic and surreal into compelling partnership. 

Book a visit to the gallery

 

Image: Hans-Peter Feldmann
20 May - 21 June 2020

Hans-Peter Feldmann Online Exhibition

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present an online exhibition of works by German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann. 

Since the 1960s, Düsseldorf-based Feldmann has amassed a prolific collection of photography, painting, postcards, knick-knacks and everyday ephemera. With the majority of his work untitled and undated, he gives away as little empirical information as possible to his audience, instead encouraging an unbiased viewing experience, unbound by context. 

Image: Eric N. Mack
Artist in focus

Eric N. Mack

Eric N. Mack refers to himself as a painter, yet his works rarely observe the medium’s traditional canvas-to-stretcher format. Rather, his tactile creations, made from a dynamic combination of used textiles, worn clothes, moving blankets and torn rags, alongside pieces of paper, photographs and pull-outs from books and magazines, extend and transform the notion of painting. His use of colour, form and material as elements in a compositional lexicon, as well as the stained or dyed fabrics which are his principal medium, declare the origin of his practice in the investigation of painting in an expanded field, while the way his compositions occupy and transform space are evidence of their sculptural nature. They are at once paintings and sculptures, fully engaging with both disciplines.

Image: Mira Dancy, France-Lise McGurn & Clare Woods
New York  4 March - 25 April 2020

Mira Dancy, France-Lise McGurn & Clare Woods

Simon Lee Gallery, New York, is pleased to announce a group exhibition featuring new works by Mira Dancy, France-Lise McGurn, and Clare Woods. Connected through an interest in figurative representation, the exhibition brings together three artists who present the body in unconventional ways, each exploring contemporary issues surrounding gender, sexuality, society and politics, as well as addressing the long and problematic history of the male gaze. The submissive female subject typically depicted reclining, seated or kneeling, is one of the most recognizable motifs in art history. As seen in this exhibition, Dancy, McGurn, and Woods respond to this convention through disparate methods presenting the figure as alternatively dominant, vulnerable, playful, or even androgynous, restoring to their subjects a sense of agency and recontextualizing the trope for our contemporary moment.

Image: Donna Huanca: WET SLIT
London  28 FEBRUARY – 18 APRIL 2020

Donna Huanca: WET SLIT

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to announce WET SLIT, a solo exhibition of new works by Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca. This is Huanca’s debut exhibition with the gallery and her first solo show in London since SCAR CYMBALS, her 2016 commission at the Zabludowicz Collection. Incorporating painting, sculpture, sound and scent, Huanca’s site-specific installation immerses viewers in a total environment which synthesises her unique aesthetic with a politics of the body as it relates to space and temporality.

Image: France-Lise McGurn: Percussia
London  24 January - 22 February 2020

France-Lise McGurn: Percussia

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to announce Percussia a solo exhibition of new work by Glasgow-based artist France-Lise McGurn. This is the artist’s debut exhibition with the gallery and the first in London since Sleepless, her 2019 solo exhibition at Tate Britain. The artist will present new paintings, works on paper and site-specific wall paintings across both gallery floors. The exhibition coincides with a major site-specific commission by the artist on view at Tramway in Glasgow. Subsequently, McGurn will also be participating in Glasgow International in April.  

Image: João Penalva
New York  15 January - 29 February 2020

João Penalva

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to announce a solo exhibition by the London-based Portuguese artist, João Penalva. For his first solo exhibition in New York since 2002, Penalva presents two new series of work based on photographs taken at the São Carlos National Theater, in Lisbon, Portugal, that explore the physical mechanics of theatrical fictions and illusions.

Following a career in dance, João Penalva began his second career as an artist in 1976, working initially as a painter. Today, Penalva is known for making large-scale installations in various media, as well as more intimate works that combine painting, photography, video and found objects, image, text and sound; addressing narrative modes and the relationships between each medium. His storytelling is often fractured, presenting juxtaposed narrative elements, allowing the viewer a latitude of freedom in their interpretation.

Image: Mai-Thu Perret: News from Nowhere
Hong Kong  10 January - 28 March 2020

Mai-Thu Perret: News from Nowhere

Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present News from Nowhere, an exhibition of new works by Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret. This will be her second solo exhibition at the Hong Kong gallery.

The exhibition’s title derives from British polymath and socialist activist, William Morris’ 1890 novel of the same name, in which he imagines a utopian future liberated from systems of capitalism. Blending utopian socialism with science fiction, the narrative follows William Guest who, after returning home from a meeting of the Socialist League, wakes the next morning to find himself catapulted into the twenty-first century and into a world beyond all recognition. Following revolutionary upheaval, England, now called ‘Nowhere’, has become a humane socialist society in which all people live in equality. Yet just as quickly as he finds himself in this paradise, Guest is transplanted back to the nineteenth century where he resolves to make his dream of the future a reality of the Victorian social order. Perret’s practice directly references Morris, whose vision of a utopian future reflects the fictionalised women-only commune that has been central to her work for the past two decades. The Crystal Frontier explores the lives of an autonomous community who have abandoned Western neoliberal society for the remote desert of South Western Mexico, envisaged by the artist as a refuge from the ills of capitalism and patriarchal convention. Like Morris’ News from Nowhere, Perret’s project engages with the promise of an ideological agenda that promotes egalitarian human relationships.

Image: Merlin Carpenter
London  22 November 2019 - 18 January 2020

Merlin Carpenter

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new paintings by Merlin Carpenter. The show considers the hand-painted object’s capacity to engage with and complicate the language and history of the readymade.

Merlin Carpenter’s work grapples with the potential relationship between painting and the readymade; and the possibility of collapsing the ideas that distinguish these practices. Since the 1990s the readymade object has been an integral line of inquiry in Carpenter’s work; and in more recent years he has presented a number of readymade works that hang flat on the wall like a painting. Carpenter’s new hyperrealistic paintings push the boundaries of painting into the discourse of the readymade in another way: the five works are so highly finished that they appear like a product, delivered from elsewhere. In this stark new presentation, Carpenter encourages the audience to both critique the authenticity of the paintings and simultaneously accept the role of the artist's hand.