Chromium Oxide features the work of NYU MFA student Chris Albert Lee.
In his first foray into installation work, Chris Albert Lee has created a series of sculptural works which aim to undermine the solidity of structures, and apply a certain sense of temporality to the permanent. Lee’s work creates a tension between these dichotomies by setting up a series of ‘walls’ or ‘gates’ in order to prod at the archetypal use of space, and comment on the issue of access within these categories of spatial operation.
Lee’s structures, whose foam makeup undercuts their commanding stature, establish a liminal space that operates outside the pre-established walls of the institution. They also confront the concept of entropy in their aesthetic turn towards ruin and decay. Taking inspiration from the writings of James Meyer and Robert Smithson, Lee engages with the notion of ‘entropy as monument’, which played an important role in Smithson’s artistic practice.
This work is an exploration of the historical use of space and its demarcation between the public and private, the sacred and profane, and what, if anything, could exist in between. Lee achieves this through the juxtaposition of imposing, structural forms, and comedic, fanciful imagery. The work’s exhibition in the Broadway windows, a storefront style window, invokes a melding of spatial categories; incorporating the exterior with interior, commercial with non-commercial.
