Epic Theater
New Work by Alexander Lee


Alexander Lee has a suspicious feeling about truth in photographs. In Epic Theater,
his first solo exhibition, Lee presents various computer drawings derived from Walker
Evans photographs. The photographs that Evans made of the Burroughs family are
some of the most famous in the world, yet little of the public realizes they are not truly
documentary, but in fact staged. Walker Evans, credited to be one of the fathers of
artistic documentary photography, is appropriated in Lee’s work following a pedigree
of conceptualist practice that includes other artists, most notably Sherrie Levine.
Dramatic staging in contemporary photographic practice is a trope that sees much
saturation and is arguably overused. So that this effect can be addressed in a different
manner on print, Lee’s derivative drawings are rendered as sets in a beautifully
colored, epically lit, human-less tableau. In conjunction with other various thoughts
around photographic practice, an outline on the theatricality of documentary practice is
made.
Alexander Lee’s current body of work includes various series addressing issues of
traditional and contemporary photographic practices. He received his B.F.A from The
School of the Art Institute in 2005 and will receive his M.F.A from the same institution
in 2009. Recent group shows include Mio Hall, Osaka, Japan; South Side Community
Art Center, Chicago; The Contemporary Artists Center, MA; The Gene Siskel Film
Center, Chicago; Doubner Space, Prague, CZ; Lee lives and works in Chicago.