KASSEL.- The Fridericianum celebrates the institutional debut of the artist Lee Kit in Germany with a concentrated solo exhibition. From January 25 to June 15, 2025, the museum becomes a place where art, everyday life, and politics merge into a multi-layered, immersive experience. Under the title His gaze has turned into disdain for those who are well-intentioned yet incapable. (A quiet day), Lee creates an expansive installation that dissolves all boundaries between artistic disciplines and offers art lovers a deep dive into the poetic, psychological, and sociopolitical dimensions of his art.
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Lee was born in Hong Kong in 1978 and now lives in Taipei. He is one of the most influential artists in Asia today. At the beginning of the 2000s, he came to prominence with paintings that are not only art objects but also everyday items. Among other things, he painted textiles and cardboard with stripes and checkerboard patterns to use them temporarily in private, domestic settings as curtains, tablecloths, and bedding.
After Hong Kong was under strict lockdown for a while during the SARS pandemic, Lee subtly commented on social conditions with his works in 2003: he organized outdoor picnics with friends and used his hand-painted fabrics as blankets. The following year, one of his works found another use when it was carried through the streets as a banner during a protest march. Against the backdrop of Hong Kong's transformation into a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and the accompanying changes, a decidedly political dimension emerged in these specific forms of use—the way his works were used in public—which is considered a key feature of his work.
Another central characteristic is the suspension of genre-specific boundaries, something already reflected in Lee's early formulations and finding ever-stronger expression in his exhibitions still today. In his presentations, he allows paintings, sculptures, films, photography, music, and language to merge into inseparable units. The spaces he creates appear like tangible, three-dimensional paintings, walk-on syntheses of the arts. Walls, protrusions, carpets and everyday objects—such as refrigerators or washing machines—become equally valid elements of a larger whole. Projections, text fragments, and musical sequences permeate his installations, creating an atmosphere where the boundaries between inside and out, private and public become blurred. Lee's works touch on fundamental human emotions, such as joy, anger, sadness, and hope offering space for a critical examination of social structures, philosophical questions, and political perspectives. His art is a call to reflect on our daily lives, our relationships, and our role in society and the world.
The exhibition at the Fridericianum offers the opportunity to get to know and experience Lee's practice on a larger scale in Germany for the first time now. The Kassel show follows a large number of institutional presentations showcasing his work in Asia, Europe, and America in recent years. Lee has had solo exhibitions at the Hong-gah Museum in Taipei (2023), at West Den Haag in The Hague (2021), the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (2018), the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2016), and the S.M.A.K.—Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent (2016), among others. In 2013 he represented Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale. Lee has also participated in group exhibitions such as Forms of the Shadow at the Secession in Vienna (2024), Carnivalesca—What painting might be at the Kunstverein Hamburg (2021), the 15th Lyon Biennale (2019), the Kathmandu Triennial (2017), The Great Ephemeral at the New Museum in New York (2015,) and the Sharjah Biennial (2015).
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