Double Square 双方藝廊

Double Square Gallery is delighted to present The Lithe Return – Lee Jo-Mei, which runs from January 7 to February 25, 2023. The solo exhibition is the artist’s second collaboration with Double Square Gallery since the 2020 group exhibition, Blossom Trees in the Stone, and will feature several two-dimensional works and three-dimensional sculptures. Lee has always been fascinated with the pure beauty and vitality of mountains, rivers, plants and trees. Through minute observation in everyday life, she contemplates on the disruptions and subtle relations between contemporary life and senses. The Lithe Return revolves around the relationship between families members and the aging of elders in her family. Through poetic sculpture and painting from life, she delineates everyday interactions in a tender, poetic manner by repeatedly copying the state of the continuously fading time.

One installation featured in this exhibition, titled I Do Take Care of Her Gently, is inspired by Lee’s daily interactions with her grandmother. Extending the idea of massage to explore the inner world through the skin surface, the artist uses the work as a lead-in to unfurl the folds of pain, and embark on a journey of massaging memory. “I am deeply captivated by the wrinkly skin of this woman, the bodily texture that looks like withering plants under the microscope, the constellation-like age spots, and the purple vine-like veins sprawling across the skin,” thus describes the artist. Through practicing massage, she unearths the emotions suppressed with her grandmother’s body. As the fingers move to the pressure points, the stories of sadness and happiness buried under the skin are awakened. Another work, She’s Lying Down, depicts a forest growing vertically, of which the canopy seems to have no end. The artist imagines how a piece of wood is produced from growing in the forest to being processed in the lumber yard, and thinks about the conversion between natural objects and the production of material, all of which she expresses with her calming brushstrokes of sketch drawing in reticence.