10.22 — 12.09.17
Devening Projects is pleased to invite you to the opening of Train View, Chicago artist Jin Lee‘s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition opens on Sunday, October 22nd with a reception for the artist and will continue until December 9th.
Train View presents a new body of work made during weekly 2-hour Amtrak commute between Chicago and Bloomington/Normal, IL from 2014 to 2016. The photographs record the beauty of the Midwest landscape in changing seasons and weather, and the ways in which the land is used, developed and inhabited. The views out of the train window include rivers, bridges, highways, housing developments, junkyards, graffiti, self-storage units, billboards, oil refinery, grain silos, wind farms, cemeteries, an old prison tower, and the limestone quarry where the prisoners once worked. They are elevated and constantly shifting back views of in-between spaces, not accessible from the streets or highways. The series also includes scenes inside the train of other passengers, streaked windows, and books read during the journey, alternating between the outside and inside worlds.
Made from the rhythm and cycles of work and rail schedule, Train View explores the way speed and movement of the train create dynamic perceptions of the landscapes, and links disparate moments and subject matters to explore multiple sense of time and space. By paying attention and photographing certain things over and over again, Lee makes pictures that are precise and accurate in the tradition of documentary photographs, but at the same time create a parallel dream-like world of images of complex moods. This project aims to contribute to photography’s rich history in revealing the changing American social and natural landscapes, and to engage in critical reflections on our present moment.
The exhibition will also include a portfolio of 100 images from the series and an artist book.
Jin Lee is a Chicago-based photographer whose projects center on forming a deeper relationship to places through close examination of landscapes and built environments. She has received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Illinois Arts Council grant, and has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago Cultural Center, and Sioux City Art Center. Her works are included in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Madison Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. She received a BA in Political Science from Wellesley College and an MFA in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently a Professor of Art at Illinois State University.
