Hamptons, New York
Mickey Lee
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Broadway East HamptonBroadway Easthampton is pleased to present Big Rock Candy Mountain, a solo exhibition of new paintings by New York artist Mickey Lee. Situated between a come-on and something more disconcerting, Lee’s nudes and animals inhabit fantastical landscapes that beckon a viewer to bacchanalian overindulgence. Referencing art-historical idylls and cautionary tales in equal measure, we are presented with feasts of fresh fish and bountiful flesh suspended in dreamlike equilibrium. Nonetheless, what lies just out of view and subtly suggested, are the wages of gluttony and lust—that the dream state can turn quickly to something peculiar and more sinister. Similarly, we see pampered pets and docile cattle, rendered in startling colors, lounging in a luxury that obscures their subservience. These subjects float in a swirl of faces in profile, suggesting both Chagallian graces and a judgmental Greek chorus. Taken together, the Lee’s paintings are a call to pleasure, while their otherworldly compositional logic underscores the urgency and ephemerality of desire.