Khan Lee on (Mono) Restoration

With a playful approach, Khan Lee works in sculpture, video, installation and performance to explore the formal qualities of everyday objects and situations.
For the exhibition Black and White and Everything In Between: A Monochrome Journey, Lee produced a site-specific installation for the Gallery's Forecourt, using colour to highlight the passage of time in the space of the museum.
Since the Gallery relocated in 1983, the Forecourt has served as the entrance to more than 100 exhibitions on the 1st Floor, each with a distinct title wall painted in a different colour. To recount the Gallery’s 41 years of exhibitions in this location, Lee has sanded through these layers of paint, producing a series of circles that reveal a colour from each year.
His hours of sanding-exposing the layers of exhibition design accumulated over four decades-create an archive of the labour required to transform the space on a regular basis. Lee’s palette is limited to the colours and combinations that were selected over time by a lineage of curators and designers. For him, “it is this potential of an abstract composition that simultaneously registers history, time and aesthetic design tastes from different eras of exhibition design that is most fascinating.”
Black and White and Everything In Between: A Monochrome Journey is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery from June 9 to November 3, 2024.
This exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Diana Freundl, Senior Curator, with Joanne So Jeong Chung, Curatorial Assistant.
Artwork: Khan Lee, "Mono (Restoration)," 2024, drywall, paint,
Courtesy of the Artist
Artist’s Assistants: Rachel Crane and Nico McGiffin

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