between the falling leaf and the surface of rock (2025)
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY
May 7 – November 10, 2025
At Storm King, Lee uses one of the earliest photographic technologies, the cyanotype process, to create an automatic record of nature. She coats rocks sourced from Storm King’s landscape with a light-sensitive solution, which, when exposed to sunlight, turn shades of deep blue. Lee exposes her sculptures over the course of a single day, from dawn to dusk, then rinses them to develop the image, creating an index of gradual changes in light and atmosphere. The artist then etches marks into the surfaces, ranging from abstract drawings to renderings of divining rods, nearby plant life, and the four cardinal directions. According to Lee, “Engaging in analog processes mirrors the nature of the survival skills I’ve studied. . . . They are physical, primal, and as instinctual as the act of collaging or the urge to capture a moment in time with a camera.” She embraces the ephemerality of these works, which will change over the course of the exhibition, ultimately returning to the earth from which they came.
Lee orients her sculptures in the field like a clock or compass. As the viewer walks around the circle, the low-lying stones invite a downward gaze. Varying shades of blue resonate with the surrounding atmosphere, while a deep indigo elicits connections to Blackness. The artist sees nature as a site of both refuge and trauma. Working against the ways in which land has been depicted, possessed, and altered throughout history, she collaborates with nature to create an image of itself: “I situate my practice in an expanded timeline of the photographic medium, where the plant fossil—an exposure, at least ten centuries long, made in darkness through pressure on rock—is the first landscape photograph.”
This exhibition is organized by Eric Booker, Associate Curator, with Adela Goldsmith, Assistant Curator.
