“In a world where we should all be screaming and dismantling the institutions that are actively destroying our planet, Gee’s work is a fleeting oasis in which we can come, shut up, and feel something.” -Formless Review
Stacey Lee Gee was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Chicago. She exhibits both nationally and internationally including at the Lubeznik Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Ignition Project Space, Ceres Gallery, Terrain Biennial, and Centro d’Art e Cultura. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Iowa and is the current president of the historic feminist gallery ARC in Chicago.
Stacey's work is an extension of the energy that leaks from her fingertips, a reconfiguration of objects past their appropriate era. Her art reorders the past in order to prepare for the future. She believes art is a service meant to perpetuate the healthy psyche of society.
artist statement
Amidst society's ever-shifting power systems and the distortion of truth that comes with it, I find solace in the study and arrangement of worn out things. The objects we interact with in our everyday lives hold a profound power, preserving evidence that cannot be erased. They carry with them the literal smells and markings of a life lived and the weight of cultural references evoked by their specific past. These artifacts are the ideal medium to overcome our tenuous relationship with truth.
The story of culture is always being written, one that pulls in the past to conjure a new narrative. My work is an observation of that ongoing conversation, an exploration of the complexities and contradictions of memory; a rebellion against the notion that the past is fixed and unchanging. I create environments large and small, as installation or sculpture, by arranging objects that are no longer bound by their original function. The presence of familiar smells and recognizable childhood playthings helps to further distort these arrangements until the edges of a new story materialize.
Poems and Photographs
My Mouth is for Salt
by stacey lee gee
Poems and photographs from one scorching season in the California high desert. Sculptor Stacey Lee Gee writes the body into a landscape of salt, ravens, coyotes, and distant bombs — a collection about thirst, appetite, and the strange comfort of becoming part of the ground you sleep on. Published by Society of the Fifth.
Releases October 24 as part of the one-night performance ROTATOR: Pulse - October 24 @ 7pm, ARC Gallery
Upcoming Events
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ROTATOR: OSCILLATIONS, SOLO EXHIBITION
10.1-30 Thursdays and Fridays 2:00-6:00PM and Saturdays 12-4PM
Rotation is to be present inside a life you only once imagined. Human presence isn’t stillness or clarity, it is both the balance within rotation and the disorientation of attempting to take stock of it. Always in equilibrium inside something, never outside it looking in.
ROTATOR
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ROTATOR: OSCILLATIONS, OPENING
10.2 6:00-8:00PM
Opening night @ ARC Gallery
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ROTATOR: PULSE, A PERFORMANCe
10.24 7-9PM
On Saturday, October 24 at 7pm, ARC Gallery hosts ROTATOR: Pulse, a one time performance featuring Stacey Lee Gee and markie. The evening marks the release of ROTATOR x emmr., an album of original experimental/ambient recordings alongside readings from My Mouth Is for Salt, a new collection of erotic poetry. The performance ROTATOR: Pulse features audiovisual works the two artists made in collaboration.