Grand Master Penmanship
Doodlers everywhere, it’s time to bow down before your ballpoint pen master: Korean-born and Brooklyn-based artist Il Lee has elevated the lowly ink doodle to high art. A lifelong scribbler myself, I’ve blown through a few ballpoint pens in my day. But I doubt anyone tops Lee, who uses hundreds of black and blue disposable pens to create monumental ink fields, some of which span over ten feet in length. (Will someone please send this man the solution to this month’s MacGyver Challenge?) Inspired by Minimalism and the Asian practice of Sumukhwa (ink and wash painting), Lee manages to evoke the mystery and power of nature with a humble, mass-produced instrument.
I was lucky enough to catch Il Lee: Ballpoint Abstractions, Lee’s first major museum solo show in the U.S., at the San Jose Museum of Art before it closed, and I was mesmerized by both the meditative nature of his work and the rigorous physicality of his pen strokes. In the solid expanses of ink, the paper is visibly fuzzy from wear. Check out the SJMA’s video of the artist in action for of glimpse of his tendonitis-inducing process.
New York museum-goers, take note: Il Lee: Ballpoint Drawing opens Thursday, July 19 at the Queens Museum of Art and remains up through September 30th; the show will feature Lee’s large-scale pen drawings on canvas and paper, as well as a 50-foot site-specific installation (his largest piece to date) and an accompanying video that documents Lee creating the massive work.
