Visual Arts

tis dark and darker still but dark no more is a very personal initiatory installation that can nonetheless speak and inspire all of us. The work looks back 30 years in 3 significant experiential thresholds that transformed Patrick Lee’s life forever, since that very fateful day 30 years ago when the Beloved came to reveal to him a Love, loving him without condition, and loving him for all eternity: “Patrick, Patrick, do not be afraid, you are precious to me, I love you and have loved you from the beginningless beginning to the endless end”.

Patrick Lee works with Art Statements since 2004. tis dark and darker still but dark no more is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. This new exhibition gives visitors a singular, emotional and for some a mystical experience, walking through three rooms representing the 3 significant experiential thresholds that transformed the artist’s life forever:

“The dawning of the Night” – A mix of texts and photographs explaining and illustrating: “the most terrible gift and working of grace to devastate, to transform my life for a new beginning, a new way of being, of “being-in-love”, loving and being loved as I had never experienced or loved before”.

“a desert song” – A large circle made of sand in the middle of a large room, lit by hundreds of candles with Chopin’s Nocturnes playing in the background: “the desert then to teach me its Silence, its Solitude, its Simplicity, an unending Struggle and an unceasing Surrender, a way to love the Beloved and to be loved by Him; a hard song that took years to learn, and am now saddened to realise the time I long wasted in detours and vain seeking in the world”.

“what is it? what is contemplation? what to do?” – 3 light boxes in a dark room, a prie-dieu reposing on a Persian rug: “what Thomas Merton had to say, the better person to know what it is about, what contemplation is, rather what it is not from his final work THE INNER EXPERIENCE to offer me a much needed guidance to co-operate with the gift of contemplation and to do God’s will”.