Austin Lee

Austin Lee (born 1983) is an American artist based in New York. Lee's airbrush paintings often combine digital technologies with traditional media. He also works in sculpture and video.

Early life and education Lee was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, and raised in Philadelphia. He received an MFA in painting from Yale School of Art in 2013 and a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art in 2006.

While a student at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Lee's studio doubled as a gallery space where he organized group and solo exhibitions to promote his artistic community. After attending Yale for his MFA, Lee moved to New York in 2013. He then transfers the V.R. drawings to the canvas through the use of the airbrush and the paintbrush.

The artist sources his subjects from his daily life: people who attract his attention on the subway or the internet, scenes of ordinary activities, animals, and flowers. Many of Lee's works evoke the emojis that have become part of everyday conversation.

Further exploiting the possibilities offered by the world of V.R., Lee has also created a series of sculptures that give form to his digital drawings with the use of a 3D printer. While the effortlessness of Alex Katz's paintings has certainly influenced him, the use of new technology in David Hockney's iPad Drawings and Cindy Sherman's Instagram self-portraits likewise resonates in Lee's works. Jeffrey Deitch has compared Lee's practice to Pop Art, “As Andy Warhol used photo silkscreens to connect painting with the image-making technologies of the 1960s, Lee fuses digital techniques with traditional painting and sculptural processes to create totally contemporary works of art."

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions Human Nature, M WOODS Museum, Beijing, 2022 American Psyche, Austin Lee & Mark Thomas Gibson, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2021 Paradise, Carl Kostyál in collaboration with KALEIDOSCOPE, Spazio Maiocchi, Milan, Italy, 2019 Feels Good, Jeffrey Deitch, New York City, 2019 Constant Joy, Mosaic Art Foundation, Istanbul, 2019 Tomato Can, Peres Projects, Berlin, 2018 Serious Works, Kaikai Kiki, Tokyo, 2017 Light Paintings, BANK, Shanghai, 2016 Anxiety, New Galerie, Paris, 2016 Nothing Personal, Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2015 NO FAIR, Isbrytaren, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2015 Me Art, Kaleidoscope, Milan, 2015 Mixed Feelings, Carl Kostyál, London, 2014 OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK, Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2014

Selected group exhibitions Punch, Curated by Nina Chanel Abney, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, 2019 Punch, Curated by Nina Chanel Abney, Jeffrey Deitch, New York, 2018 Summer Show, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2017 The Second Self, Peres Projects, Berlin, 2017 For Pete’s Sake, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm, 2016 Full of Peril and Weirdness: Painting as a Universalism, M Woods, Beijing, 2015