Visual Arts

Movie stars from the 80s, from gay icon to decadent abandon; lonesome gaze on strangers and encounters ; nude male a la Michelangelo ; religious objects of spiritual redemption and desire; meditative landscapes after the photographer’s cancer. A perfumed gala of visual senses from the Mishima look of Zhang Yi Mou to a phallic memento mori .The 102 photos in this retrospective transform the gallery into an empire of sensuality that defines the obsession of Julian Lee.

The First Retrospective of Julian Lee is an accumulation of Julian’s work for the past 30 years. His gay sensibility perfumes his works from the 80’s up to now since he started up as a celebrity photographer for the very Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine look-alike, the Hong Kong City Magazine, the most chic and trend-setting magazine during that period.

In his first section, Vanity Fair, he displayed a sensual Zhang Yi Mou with the reference of Mishima as in Mishima’s book ‘Ordeal by Roses’ His camera reveals the very private personality of Joey Wang, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong and many other celebrities with a very self – confessional approach. You can almost feel the intimacy of the stars as a confidant.

In the Second Section of the exhibition ‘Law of Desire’, Julian Lee displays his harvest of men when he moves to London in late eighties to enroll in Royal College of Art and triumphs as the best art graduate in the British New Contemporaries exhibiting opposite to Damien Hirst in the same exhibition. Julian Lee challenges the norm with his beautiful image of men, either in a meditative gesture or a sensuous pose that defies the conservative atmosphere of the HK society at that period. His beauty of men is a reflection to his opening up to his own desire as being gay. And his beautiful Jesus Christ figure adores the record cover of Boy George’s Il Adore CD cover.

In the third section ‘Flesh and Soul‘ , male nudes are explored to the likening of michealanglo’s sculpture and Manet’s Olympia, the nude painting. Julian employs the reference of classical painting to pose his male models to substitute the original female nude and projects his fantasy on his body aesthetics. His male nudes has been collected into the exhibition and book of the same title : ‘Suspending Torso’, launched in Hong Kong Photo Festival in 2010.

In the fourth section , ‘ My Vanitas’, Julian explores his sentiments through the theme of life and death after he was diagonised with cancer, and in this period, angelic figure, skull and religious objects reflects his obsession with preciousness of being young and innocent. All are memento mori ( religious object as in classical renaissance painting) to his last breath to keep the sense of beauty like a visual poem. These images defines Julian as a visionary of senses and sensation.

In the last section, the fifth section of the exhibition, ‘Pantonemine’ is a playful combination of the word ‘Pantone’ and ‘Mine’, which is suggested as ‘my colorful life’. Here we find a different Julian as he is calm, meditative and relaxed to enjoy a glimpse of himself within the nature. Contemplating on Juilan’s landscape taken during his travels, you cannot but amazed as he captures the connection between men and nature, which is expressed as symbolism as in the painting of Caspar David Friedrich. Julian himself enjoys describing the exhibits in this section, very ‘Edward Hopper’sque ‘. The casual glance of the mundane reveals the beauty of the permanent compared to the transience of life.