Items for Sale:    The Chinese Porcelain Company

Country of Origin China

Dated 2010

Dimensions 104.50inch wide   60.50inch high (265.43 cm wide  153.67 cm high) External/Framed Dimensions 113.50inch framed width   69.50inch framed height (288.29 cm framed width  176.53 cm framed height)

Exhibition History

"Whispering Pines, Soaring Mountains: Ink Paintings by Lee Chun-yi," October 21-30, 2010 at The Chinese Porcelain Company, New York.

Description / Expertise

Lee Chun-yi’s art employs an idiosyncratic visual language, where cork-stamp impressions act as words and a grid-lined format provides sentence structure. Since his youth, he has been impressed by the monumentality of Han Dynasty stone stelae, which for two thousand years have signified permanence, authority and orthodoxy in Chinese culture. Often such stelae were engraved with commemorative inscriptions within a grid—a format that inspired Lee in his own paintings and that makes them immediately recognizable.
More notable is his disregard for the brush. Lee paints with cork because its interesting surface texture and absorbency produce an array of possibilities on paper. This technical innovation contributes to the works’ visual appeal. Distinctive as his methods are, the philosophy behind the works themselves are even more fascinating. In this dramatic departure from his distantly viewed vistas, Lee’s close-up inspiration comes from an ancient poem which expresses a feeling of "林深不知處", which translates as “deep in the woods, not knowing where I am or who I am.”

Signed/Inscribed/Dated

Signed: Lee Chun-yi 10 (lower left corner)