Austin Lee: Psychomachia in Miami, Presented by Jeffrey Deitch

Miami, FL – December 3, 2024 – Austin Lee presents an ambitious curatorial project and mural in the Design District that fuses traditional painting with digital technologies. Austin Lee knows how to render human emotion. Through a unique process that has defined his career, Lee explores human psychology and emotions by integrating software technologies with traditional methods of art making to produce vibrant paintings, sculptures and video works. Psychomachia in Miami is an extension of the solo exhibition Lee presented in Los Angeles earlier this fall. The exhibition continues Jeffrey Deitch’s history of presenting exhibitions and public art projects in the Miami Design District since 2003.

Lee’s work explores the hyperreality of social media and the internet, and, in this exhibition, he continues to explore the complexity of human connection that can be refracted through our digital age. He uses 3-D and virtual reality software to make drawings that are then painted on canvases with airbrush or “sculpted” in materials like resin and bronze. Lee turns inward and examines his own raw emotions through saturated hues and uncanny images.

The exhibition draws inspiration from a transformative visit Lee made to the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, where he saw Giotto’s painted scenes from the 14th-century poem “Psychomachia” by Prudentius. The poem, which depicts the allegorical battle between virtues and vices for control over the human soul, served as an important source for several paintings in the exhibition. Some of Lee’s paintings show imagery that is directly drawn from the Chapel’s walls, while others are quite references to familiar symbols.

Central to the exhibition is Blue Fountain (2022-2024), Lee’s fountain sculpture that was previously exhibited in his solo museum exhibition at the Lotte Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea in September 2023. Joy (2023) and Repose (2023) were also exhibited at the Lotte Museum.

Psychomachia also features a series of new video works that continue to explore surveilled environments and disquieting feelings evoked in the paintings. The animated figures ogle at the viewer from the same viewpoint as reflected In Bed (2024). It is common for Lee to build upon previous works, placing them in a rich, multidimensional visual world through rendering them in different media.

Austin Lee