Te 'ū no’ano’a (The Colour Fragrant), 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
Marisa Newman Projects is proud to present NO’ANO’A, an installation of new paintings, prints, and sculptures by Tahiti and New York based artist Alexander Lee.
Throughout his multi-disciplinary work, Lee explores the historical and cultural makeup of Tahiti, dissecting, collapsing and reshuffling its narratives and signs, questioning how one might see the world and emit signs outward from a place already loaded with projected clichés. For NO’ANO’A, he tackles the specter of Paul Gauguin and the legacy of French colonial history and nuclear experiments to produce a body of work that obliquely tells of one’s searching and yearning for a paradise lost amidst an irradiated world.
Lee made a series of paintings juxtaposing the motif of breadfruit leaves onto colorfield underpaintings that reference Gauguin but also Warhol, Frankenthaler, Johns, O’Keeffe, DeFeo, Newman, and even Baldessari (among others). The breadfruit itself is a recurring theme in Lee’s work. Its importance to the region is immeasurable: from a Tahitian legend that tells of a man transforming his body into a breadfruit tree to save his starving family, to Joseph Banks transplanting it to the Caribbean islands to feed English slaves, as portrayed by Marlon Brando in The Mutiny on the Bounty, from its uses in Polynesian textiles patterns, to the idea of a tree transplanted for sustenance and its ability to grow in a contaminated environment. The leaf is a living sign.
No’ano’a means fragrant in Tahitian language. It is also the title Gauguin used for the travel journal he kept during his first trip to Tahiti, and which he edited to contextualize the works he had made while there (it was never published while he was alive). Lee reverses the gesture and comes to NYC to paint images from Tahiti, by literally installing his paintings inside a landscape. This small and condensed mise en abîme presentation turns the project space into an environment where the subject of the paintings are leaves, the viewer becomes the figure, and the paintings are fragrant. NO’ANO’A.
Alexander Lee was born in Stockton, CA, and grew-up on the island of Tahiti, French Polynesia. He earned his BFA from the School of Visual Arts (2000), his MFA from Columbia University (2002), and MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (2004). Lee has exhibited extensively in the USA and internationally. In 2017, his work TE ATUA VAHINE MANA RA O PERE (The Great Goddess Pere) - L’Aube où les fauves viennent se désaltérer a multi-room installation collapsing the narratives or Pere and the many nuclear tests in the Pacific was part of the 1st Honolulu Biennale; Te fanau’a ‘una’una na te Tumu: THE SENTINELS, a continuous wall painting covering 4500 m2 of the MHKA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp was presented during A Temporary Futures Institute; and ME-TI’A - An Island Standing, a video work, was commissioned and presented by TBA21 / Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Wien and is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, Croatia. Most recently, Alexander Lee drew the new brandmark for Air Tahiti Nui, the international airline of Tahiti, in collaboration with Future Brand. It was launched in 2018.
Gallery hours for this exhibition will be Wednesday through Friday, 1 – 6 pm, and by appointment.
38 West 32 Street, Suite 1602 New York, NY 10001