For Entertainment Purpose Only
Marta Lee

Please join us Friday, February 14th, 6 – 9 pm for the opening of For Entertainment Purpose Only by Marta Lee.

Opening reception: February 14th, 6PM-9PM
On view: February 14th - 20th, 2020
25 Park Pl. 3 Fl.
New York 10007

For Entertainment Purpose Only features new works by Marta Lee, made during a six-week Guest Residency at Hercules Art Studio Program. Lee’s work explores identity, language, and multiple subjectivities, through her palpably material practice which allows for myriad interpretations. The still lives used in these pieces pair domestic objects like rugs with more utilitarian items suggestive of the artist’s studio, such as paint palettes. Lee’s compositions draw from the sphere of the everyday, driven by her inherent intuition (with her Sun sign in Cancer and her Moon and Rising in Libra). Lists of favorite songs or albums, monthly calendars, and other ephemera function as matte-medium transfers, adding photographic elements to layers of acrylic and oil. Each piece contains a variety of textures, which are sometimes carved directly into the painted surface. This exhibition, titled after the text on the backside of an aura reading, engages with notions of fate, astrology, and balance.

Born in Moscow, Idaho, Marta Lee was raised in Eastern Washington and East Tennessee and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She earned a BFA from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and an MFA from the University of Texas-Austin. She has participated in Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Fire Island Artist Residency (Cherry Grove, NY), an Exchange fellowship at Royal College of Art Sculpture Programme (London, UK), and an Artist-in-Residence Fellowship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO) Lee has exhibited nationally and internationally in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, London, and Baltimore. This is her first solo exhibition in NYC.