The Pascal of the Paintbrush: An Analysis of MO & Chi-Town's Expressionist Prodigy Isaiah Lee's Art at Holsum in 2023
Painterly precocity appears to be a prerequisite for successfully joining the expressionist canon
As a critic (and human), I've always been fascinated with the seemingly sacramental vocation of the painter, not just in art and in history but also in the course and confluence of day-to-day life, both social and sociopolitical influence, prestige (or sometimes lack thereof), and so on. Humans and all biological organisms, and almost everything in existence, are on a perennial quest for connection in some form or another. Therefore, something akin to the painter must be valid and germane in what is made in humanity's begottenness, be it with Pollock, Rothko, Picasso, or whoever is immaterial and in specificity becomes a science of technical distinctions. The painter is distinct from the artist but not in the retinal versus cerebral sense. In specific ways, the painter must succeed in merging both aspects. For painters, work requires more than skill, craft, and patience; it also requires the cerebral -- conceptualization, parsing, vision, and the ever-challenging, talent-driven, taxing task of execution and execution with precision, content, audience, institutional memory, and aesthetic in mind.
Still, painters are an all of the above subsumption and are still very singular -- primitive, sophisticated, cultured, and humane (and therefore "among us artists" or throughout global artistic initiatives). So, throughout history, the painter was not just an artist; the painter was also a craftsman making fresh toolkits of ancestor artists back in the Philippines, Thailand, France, etc. Painting (and drawing) is foundational and elemental to all art, art history, art theory, human creativity, ingenuity, and spirituality. Still, being a bona fide "painter" is the kind of appellation par excellence akin to the appellation "poet" or "poeta" on par with kings and emperors, after which all the other arts should surely follow as they did in ancient times.
Enter Isaiah Lee, an early twenty-something artist and painter from Missouri now in Chicago, Illinois (for I have strayed a bit but wanted to provide a broader contextual and theoretical framework and backdrop for my analysis here today)
In November 2023, I hung out with artist and gallerist Garry Noland after an open studio event at Holsum Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri. The showing was Friday, November 10th, 5–9 p.m. and Saturday, November 11th, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. -- featuring the work of Isaiah Lee, Travis Pratt, Jenna Bauer, Katharina Bossman, Kylie McConnell, Laura Nugent, and Mark Hennick, among others in various studios. The highlights of this show were Travis Pratt and Isaiah Lee, the latter of whom I became especially intrigued by and whose inspired expressionist modus operandi and well-cultivated aesthetic bears further analytical assessment. They shall be the focus of the ensuing critical literature.
Isaiah Lee is a painter and mixed-media artist. I spent about five hours at Holsum, about two hours taking in the artwork and photographs as necessary, and about three hours sipping drinks and hanging and chatting with Kansas City arts OG Garry Noland. It was a cosmic blast of a grand time. Isaiah is SO young, which is impressive (for lack of a more pointed superlative) given his work's creative, conceptual, and philosophical maturity. Originally from Missouri, Isaiah now lives in Chicago, where he teaches art. He holds an undergraduate degree in art education from the University of Central Missouri, with his eyes set on an M.F.A. or M.A. in studio art or art criticism.
Like many expressionists before him (think: Schnabel and the ever-too-obvious Basquiat), painterly precocity appears to be a prerequisite for successfully joining the expressionist canon with the subsequent cultural coronation of "painter" observed thoughtfully and keenly by audiences, artists, and critics alike, that he's only 23 years old in a city as "city-like" and immense as Chi-Town in the U.S. also says something that isn’t at all insignificant. Chicago is often seen as a step up for many Kansas City artists, writers, and academics looking for a more expansive and enormous artistic playground. It is the logical leap from Missouri into the fun-as-all-get-out far-east Illinois.
Growing up in The Church of Christ, Isaiah holds a sense of spirituality that is both exploratory and astutely developed. He is a religious humanist and a religious thinker, although I can't speak to his religious convictions or ideals beyond what I glean from his practice or artistic meditations. He has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of Biblical history that presents without pretense or pedantry. Indeed, it is thoughtful and intellectually acute. His works are multiplicative, as evidenced in his series "Her Choir," with refractions seemingly derived from Lewis Carroll and the outsider art canon with an "insider" refinement of beauty out of chaos.
"Her Choir" conveys and displays the controlled insanity of Harmony Korine and childlike drawings analogous to what one sees in a schoolroom or even in the dark or ominously playful corridors of the dreadful and childlike (but also phenomenologically tense) psychiatric facilities, evincing careful marksmanship on the paper with a surrealist and trippy acuity, marrying bewilderment with clarity and an overarching purpose and direction. Hence, neither the artist nor his artwork is actually "lost." Lee's vision and artistic aesthetics shine in this identity paradigm, longing for spiritual, ontological, and social truth and reunion with one another and perhaps with the constitutive elements of the larger whole (or the “whole” itself) or even with the Divine. The exhibit's series and pieces showcase colorful characters, almost with a high-art cartoon aspect, with myriad eyes and identities merged and deliberately conflated and disjoined.
In a stand-alone painting — Isaiah's self-portrait at the Holsum Gallery, Lee displays an emotionless, albeit commanding, gaze transfixed on the viewer with all the attendant St. Francis of Assisi characteristic elements: ambiance and trappings. Isaiah wears glasses, has shorter hair in the self-portrait, and an earring in the work. Yet, one of the more striking anachronisms is the "Tyson" sweatshirt that adorns the painter in the piece. In such work with antecedents similar to the paintings of St Francis that have survived in the Western world, Isaiah leaps not from one time and place to another, as spirituality and art are indeed without “time,” and the overlap forever transcends the centuries. Instead, it invokes infinite temporal duration or even timelessness (and therefore a kind of postmodern eternal life) in his artistry, whatever existed made in the image of whatever preceded it (pick what you will and be as literal, abstract, or figurative as you like) it is in that timelessness we find the most accurate summation of everlasting life, and as I imagine, it is one of maybe three ways humanity has made peace with their mortality; art is such a way, the others being family and religion.
Meanwhile, the colors are complementary and inviting, evoking serenity within the religious and the spiritual, tempering it with the power of self-control, self-awareness, and a nuanced, fascinating gaze borne forward into the postmodern economy and sociohistorical detailings. Realistic and symbolic in its depiction and form, it is thoughtful, expressive, and marked with varying shades of blue, yellow, and the red and white "Tyson" logo, paying homage to the certainty and authority of tradition, the Holiness of work, and the strangely beautiful components and characterological composition that comprises the intersection of the faithful with modernity in an obligatory and obligingly modernized cultural spectacle of the search for meaning in a God-forsaking post-Enlightenment world. Indeed, a reflection of a nuanced and careful thinker, a prodigious bohemian, a Pascal of the paintbrush, an ascetic, the monk on Mount Missouri in contemporaneity at home in disjunction, the past, and (more pointedly) the everpresent now finding room for more wholly systematic explorations and sorties in larger and grander locales regionally and nationally.
Underscoring the importance and significance of our common community and shared humanity, Isaiah uses exquisitely bold colors, characteristically bland color harmonies (although vibrancy often shines through), and many disparate mediums, with a slight preference for acrylics and related materials. The painterly mode expressed in "Her Choir" (to reevaluate) is indeed multi-pronged and multi-factorial with a lasagna of layers to unpack and imbibe; however, as a side note (and perhaps as a side benefit as well), we are better after imbibing not just the viscerally compelling within a work of art but of course also after entirely consuming and assimilating the thoughtfully engaging also contained therein. It is perhaps only with an emphasis on both of these aspects that a latent imperfect "perfection" (for lack of more precise verbiage) is found in the cosmic imbalance that characterizes the finitude of human potential within the otherwise infinite parameters of human possibility, only to utilize the philosophical would be to miss the mark; in fact, it would likely be akin to trying to play eighteen holes with a putter. Philosophy must be married to action.
In actuality, it lies with the psychic nature of artists to fill in the margins of the undefined. However, there is, of course, the joie de vivre, the colors, boldness without audacity, collage and graffiti elements, intellectualism, and the benevolent and the ambitious (and still yet remarkably humble) Isaiah indeed not as derivative but instead presents frankly as a veritable artistic wunderkind both novel and mature, present, and ahead of the curve for his age and craft as well as ahead of the current societal climate. Isaiah may not have gallery representation currently, but Isaiah, I assure you, it's coming very soon. Isaiah doesn't disappoint like most prodigies before him. I hope that no matter what happens, Isaiah remains faithful to the authenticity, thoughtfulness, and boldness that define his practice and personage as they do now.
That is its own trinity. And it’s worthy of celebration.
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More information:
http://www.isaiahleestudios.com/
INSTA: @isaiahleeart
~ alexej