Simon Lee works in photography, video, performance and installation. His work has been described as “a powerful metaphor for the random flow of history and a low tech formal tour de force” (Holland Cotter, New York Times). His fascination with watching dailyness, shooting cinéma vérité, collecting tens of thousands of found photographs and working with actors feed into his work. Lee’s projects include live multi-screen theatrical events, ad-hoc performances in public space, single and dual channel films and sculptural installations.
Lee’s film collaboration with Algis Kizys, Where is the Black Beast? was was an official selection at the Rotterdam Film Festival and toured internationally. Projects with Eve Sussman include No food No money No jewels, commissioned by EMPAC in Troy, New York. CollusionNoCollusion, a film and live performance in St Petersburg, Russia; Car Wash Incident, a multi-channel installation that presents as a recursive mystery and What Lies Behind, a performance/installation that took the ubiquitous public cell phone conversation as a jumping off point. Performers “channeled” monologues of famous liars streamed to a surveillance control room hidden behind a functioning barbershop at an art fair. Previous iterations of the performance piece All the reporters laughed and took pictures…used spoken word choruses to create narrative interventions in public space.
Lee has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum ofArt; The Berkshire Museum, MA; Roebling Hall, New York; the Moscow International Film Festival; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal; Poznan Biennale, Poland; The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn NY; Tinguely Museum, Basel, Switzerland; Espace Paul Ricard, Paris, France; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Together with Eve Sussman, Lee co-founded the Wallabout Oyster Theatre, a performance space, run out of their studio in Brooklyn.
