Rhys Lee

WOAW Gallery presents its inaugural group show “Stay Tuned…” at their new gallery space, 9 Queens Road Central, Hong Kong. This exhibition is curated by a long-time friend of the gallery, Sasha Bogojev from Juxtapoz Magazine. The exhibition is viewing from 9th April –9th May, 2021.Staying tuned was at the same time never easier and never harder than it is nowadays. With fast and direct access to any news source, archive, store, or any person anywhere on the globe, the challenge of following something through has never been greater. And in the world of arts this means immediate access to artists’ studios, galleries, or museums globally, and the ability to closely observe the evolutions of new styles, births of new aesthetics, developments of new techniques, and first-hand experience of unraveling art history.In this regard, WOAW Gallery joined together five artists, Bas De Wit, Rhys Lee, Shannon Peel, Christopher Regner and Aaron Elvis Jupin, whose practices are not only keeping up with the current times, but are hinting about things to come. The purpose of WOAW Gallery is to provide a platform for artists, curators and collectors to appreciate art. So, stay tuned…Christopher Regner, Hercules’ Party at his Cool Dad’s”, 2021Providing a counterbalance to the aforementioned artists, US-based Christopher Regner is using air brush to create assemblage-style portraits made out of disparate reference imagery .Interested both in the technical limitations and possibilities of growingly popular artistic tools, the artist from American Midwest keeps developing new ways of blending unrelated visuals in order to explore struggles with masculinity in the context of lacking a comprehensive role model. Through such practice he is fully utilizing the flatness and plasticity of the technique, while constructing most uncanny jumbles filled with personal, historic, as well as pop-culture references.Bas De Wit, “In funny memory of … Apollo #2″, 2020Dutch artist Bas De Wit has been creating grotesque, surreal objects and settings through appropriation of almost organic characteristics to his sculptural references to Greek columns, Roman bust statues, or canvas paintings. While bent pillars or deflated and twisted effigies feel otherworldly from a distance, his technical experimentation with the properties and possibilities of the multicolored polyester results in endless layers of colors and textureswhich open up upon closer inspection. This whole approach is informed with the interest to comment on the transience of culture and a glorification of irrational thought while present the humorous perspective on the struggle of humanity and the drag of the everyday.Rhys Lee, “Apple Tree”, 2021Rhys Lee’s paintings are crashscenes of his graffiti past colliding with deep appreciationand respect for classical painting. Mixing his immediate approach with curiosity for technicaland contextual exploration, the Australian artist is creating heavily textured works that carryscars of his resolute and vigorous mark-making. Filled with references to both grafficonography and most traditional tropes, the artist is frequently re-painting chosen composition in an effort to explore the ways it changes with a different technical approach or setup.Shannon Peel, “Face Plant with sunflower”, 2020Lee’s NY-based fellow countryman and a long-time friend, Shannon Peel, has recentlystarted developing his own painterly practice in which he reinvents the traditional formatsthrough subtle animation of otherwise inert motifs. His ongoing body of work Still Alives andFace Plants quite literally inserts life and dynamics to typically inanimate subjects, all while referencing both his graff roots and some of the most recognizable artistic genres. Through the use of dedicated repetition the artist is exhausting the subject matter, switching the focus towards technical experimentation and discovery.Aaron Jupin, “Like to think, I am a man”, 2020Working with the same technique, but utilizing its qualities towards the other side of the aesthetic spectrum, LA-based Aaron Elvis Jupin constructs believable renderings of impossible realities. His masterful employment of airbrush enables him to construct mostrealistic scenes which turn the familiar mundane snapshots into the unthinkable extraordinary. With a focus on depicting almost tangible surfaces and frequent use of black negative space, he lures the focus onto a familiar object which instantly warps into a somewhat Dali-esque mirage of it self through an attribution of ludicrous qualities.Curator Sasha Bogojev is a contributing editor/European correspondent at Juxtapoz magazine. Born in Croatia and currently living in The Netherlands, over the years he has contributed to various international publications and media outlets, collaborated with artists on monographs/books/catalogs, and has curated a number of gallery shows worldwide.Scroll down below to view more photos of the exhibition. More