Riah Lee to show recent paintings at TASI, May 2-23

BEAUMONT — Riah Lee, 2014 winner of The Art Studio, Inc. Member Jurored Art Exhibition (TASIMJAE), will show her recent work, May 2-23, at The Art Studio, 720 Franklin in downtown Beaumont.

The show opens with a free reception, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., May 2.

The show will feature a series of works painted over the past year.

“Recently, I’ve been interested in how the way we interpret images of female nudity has changed throughout the history,” Lee said. “With this series I focused on depicting not only the figures, but also the air and the room, and the situation that’s unfolding, like a photograph does.

“I hope that viewers see the figures and the atmosphere first, so I remove the most identifiable feature of the human body — the face — by cutting them out, blurring them, or hiding them on purpose.”

The South Korea native recently graduated with a BFA in Painting from Seoul National University of Science and Technology. Lee entered last year’s membership show while she was studying at Lamar University for a semester.

“The time I had in Beaumont certainly was different from what I thought about Southeast Texas,” she said. “People are living with different values from where I come and it is something nicer and generous. It is very easy to judge things before experience and I found it is not the right attitude to have after the time in Beaumont.”

Her experience in Southeast Texas has helped shaped her artistic philosophy.

“With my works, I’m always attempting to reveal the difference between perspective and the real,” she said. “I believe images are one of the more direct ways to reveal that difference, because we all see mainly what we want to see, based on our own experiences.”

The Art Studio is located at 720 Franklin in downtown Beaumont. Hours are 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.

For more information, call 409-838-5393, or visit www.artstudio.org.

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