Lee Walton - Conceptually Brilliant
Lee Walton, Bummed Pack, 2004, Gift of the ArtistI consider Lee Walton not only a great friend, but one of the most brilliant artists I have ever met. Think Tino Sehgal meets pop culture. And I mean think about it seriously. Tino Sehgal is one of the most talked about artists of the past two years amongst the art community, and Lee takes away all of the art pretense of Tino (who I think is brilliant by the way) and relates his work not just to the art aficionado, but to the common man. Ok, I'll say it: Cattelan, Sehgal, Walton - 3 of my favorites.
Bummed Pack, was made for and unbeknownst to me, while Lee was visiting. I am an avid smoker (hopefully not for long) and Lee is a non-smoker. While here for a few days, Lee "bummed" an entire pack of cigarettes from random people on the streets of Indy, packaged it in plexi, signed it and sent it priority mail as a surprise. As I'm sure this was not his intention, I think i partly continue to smoke because I am afraid a nic-fit will cause me to sneak into my secret stash. Believe me, that will never happen.
Lee is an avid sports fan. I almost hate to even mention that because when sport is mentioned along with art one often thinks of the cheesy covers of programs from NBA games and collegiate events. Lee takes it to another level. He has equated entire baseball games to instructions for drawings and performances, he has played an entire round of golf shooting one shot per day, and he has linked chess moves to symphonic performances. Tough to explain in words but visit his website and you will see what I mean.
Lee is brilliant. White Columns knows it, Art in General knows it, Reykjavik Art Museum knows it, the Berkeley Art Museum knows it, along with countless others. Soon, I think the whole world will know it too.
posted by ChristopherWestPresents at 10:14 PM
2 Comments:
I have loved lee's work since I saw a piece at the socrates sculpture park where he carried weights across the 59th street bridge every weekend(?) and placed them on a pole until they were stacked I think his weight?. I just loved the idea of someone doing this kind of work....then looking at his site, all of the sports work, translating that world into the art world with real humor. We had an opportunity to show in Boston and asked Lee to work on something with us...two beers later he suggested cutting up a mystery novel into 3 horizontally, and then we try to piece together the mystery...here.
Great blog, I found it thanks to lee.
Jason
i saw his work at an upper east gallery. the baseball drawings are fantastic. i want one.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home