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Touring Lee Kit’s Home Away from Home at the Venice Biennale

Artsy Editorial
May 30, 2013 6:35PM

His name rolls easily off of the tongue, but that’s not likely the reason everyone is saying it. Lee Kit is a Hong Kong-based contemporary artist, and has been the talk of the town during last week’s Art Basel in Hong Kong and the talk of 2012 with 24 exhibitions just last year. At the opening of his solo exhibition “You (you)” at the 55th Venice Biennale, Artsy followed Lee on a personal tour of the historic space—in Venice’s Campo della Tana square—outfitted like a home full of disparate domestic objects. Using items that reflect his daily life in Hong Kong (their sourcing involved trips to IKEA in neighboring Mestre), Lee created a domestic, abstract living space complete with tables and chairs, carpets and television, and carefully picked paint colors. “When you sit at home and you feel alone—even with people, it doesn’t matter—you just feel alone, and there’s a certain moment where you go, okay, it’s quiet,” he said of the installation. “That second lasts forever... it feels like forever, for me.”

But why the title? “Usually, we brush our teeth, prepare everything in the morning, in front of the mirror,” he said. “But at one moment, at some point you realize you are talking to yourself in the mirror. You say, ‘you’, ‘you’ … you are talking to yourself. I mean, if you say ‘you’ in front of the mirror, actually you are talking about ‘me’.”

Assembled with objects from Kit’s daily life, as the title suggests, “You (you)” provokes an inward glance for the artist and viewers alike.

Installation of ‘You, (you)’ courtesy of the artist, M+, WKCDA and HKADC. Photos by David Levene.
On view at Castello 2126, Campo della Tana as part of the 55th Venice Biennale. Explore
Artsy Editorial