Lee Kit

Curatorial team: Larissa Hüttenhein, Julia Schleis, and Moritz Wesseler

Lee Kit, born in Hong Kong in 1978 and now living in Taiwan, came to prominence in the first several years of this century with paintings that are not just art objects but also everyday items: He painted stripes and checkerboard patterns on materials like textiles to use them temporarily in a domestic environment as curtains and tablecloths or outdoors as picnic blankets or banners. Using materials, especially in this latter form, in the context of the protest movements in Hong Kong, injected a decidedly political aspect—one that is considered a key feature of his works still today. Another central characteristic is the suspension of genre-specific boundaries, something that already came to notable fruition in Lee’s early formulations and still today finds ever-stronger expression in his exhibitions. In his presentations, he melds his paintings, sculptures, films, photography, music, and language to form a single unit. The results are intense, immersive worlds of image, thought, and experience that are as imbued with a delicate poetry as they are with the desire to proclaim a social utopia. The Fridericianum presents Lee’s first solo exhibition in Germany—a walk-on synthesis of the arts.

Lee’s professional biography includes institutional exhibitions in Asia, Europe, and America. He represented Hong Kong at the 2013 Venice Biennale and presented his solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2016), the S.M.A.K.—Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent (2016), the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (2018), the West Den Haag in The Hague (2021), and at the Hong-gah Museum in Taipei (2023). 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 Triennale (2017), The Great Ephemeral at the New Museum in New York (2015), and the Sharjah Biennial (2015).