OBJECTS

In the summer of 1985 lennie Lee moved to East london. The area was very run down. One bulding in ten was derelict and had not been repaired since the bomb damage of the second world war.
Lee began exploring empty buildings and soon developed a passion for the objects he found inside.
His early experiments with discarded material were simply a continuation of the paintings.
Found objects were used to build figurative constructions.Instead of using paint to build a picture’s surface he chose the rich texture of a roof slate, a piece of burnt wood or an abandoned wall.
Later, Lee became fascinated with discarded material of all kinds from broken glass to putrid meat, from a wrinkled shopping bag to a deformed boot. Lee began framing unusual everyday objects that he felt to be of symbolic significance, ranging from a disabled person’s shoe to a collection of bloody tampons, from packets of dried anchovies to smashed windscreen glass. For Lee, these objects held a magical iconic power.
In the summer of 1988 he began working with the ARC group in 108 Drummond Street and later Chumley Dene and The Ball's Pond Road. In the summer of 1990 he made a series of installations from found materials on the Barbican gallery's sculpture court, in the Kunst Halle, Berlin and at the Cirque Divers, Liege.