The exhibition Maggie Lee: Magazine at Kunsthalle Zürich is the culmination of the artist Maggie Lee’s longstanding ambition to produce her own widely circulated publication, influenced by her background working in copy stores and creating zines since her teenage years in New Jersey. Self-publishing holds a particular allure for Lee, offering a platform for creative self-expression and connecting with a broader audience. Her artistic process involves collecting, cutting, scanning, and assembling materials to create collages, installations, videos, and sound works, all centered around the technique of montage and the joy of disseminating self-made content.
The exhibition at Kunsthalle Zürich mirrors the concept of Lee’s imagined magazine, featuring a central desk representing the creative hub, surrounded by inspirations and ideas. The walls showcase paintings resembling magazine layouts, graffiti reminiscent of advertisements, and a strange horror film. Lee’s artistic practice, often likened to diary writing due to her background as a blogger, combines reposting, collecting, commenting, and compiling, reflecting the DIY ethos of zine culture. Maggie Lee: Magazine is curated by Otto Bonnen and runs until May 20, 2024.
In this video, we have a look at the exhibition on the occasion of the opening day, and Maggie Lee introduces us to her show by talking about her artistic practice, the concept of the show and how it came about.
Maggie Lee: Magazine / Kunsthalle Zürich. Interview with Maggie Lee, February 9, 2024.
The exhibition at Kunsthalle Zürich mirrors the concept of Lee’s imagined magazine, featuring a central desk representing the creative hub, surrounded by inspirations and ideas. The walls showcase paintings resembling magazine layouts, graffiti reminiscent of advertisements, and a strange horror film. Lee’s artistic practice, often likened to diary writing due to her background as a blogger, combines reposting, collecting, commenting, and compiling, reflecting the DIY ethos of zine culture. Maggie Lee: Magazine is curated by Otto Bonnen and runs until May 20, 2024.
In this video, we have a look at the exhibition on the occasion of the opening day, and Maggie Lee introduces us to her show by talking about her artistic practice, the concept of the show and how it came about.
Maggie Lee: Magazine / Kunsthalle Zürich. Interview with Maggie Lee, February 9, 2024.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 [Street noise]
00:02 [Street noise]
00:30 The show is called Magazine and it's a play off my name, Maggie, and I thought
00:36 that it would be cool to, if I wasn't an artist, to run a magazine because
00:40 everyone is so talented, my friends, and I thought it would be cool if everyone had
00:45 a part of the magazine. So that was just the first concept of the show and then I
00:51 decided to break down the floor of the gallery space or in sections. So the main
00:59 center of the piece is a editor's desk and the wall works are pages of a
01:07 magazine and then there's also drawings and kind of like a graffiti style wall
01:16 piece and that's about advertisements and there's just a lot of elements in
01:22 the exhibition. I just wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to do what I wanted to
01:26 do, like what I was passionate about and what I felt in the mood and what just
01:31 came out of me. I think that's what makes the best art, if you're honest and real, I
01:36 guess. And then I really wanted to make a movie. It's a psychological thriller
01:42 called Pink Horror and I made it with my friend Heiji Shin and we asked little
01:50 people to be acting as children and then I asked my two friends to act as
01:56 my friends that were strangers. I asked them to act as a couple that were like
02:02 meeting on a first date but and really I wanted them to go on a date and we were
02:06 filming each first date and setting up all these like funny scenarios for them.
02:13 But it's about Peter Pan syndrome or Peter Pan complex. It's a psychological
02:20 thriller where these characters are in the woods and deep in their subconscious
02:26 and lost and I feel like after finishing the film I think it will change the
02:34 dynamic of the New York City scene. That's where I'm from and I'm excited
02:40 for everyone to see it. And then the space can be seen as like the woods as
02:46 well. It's just like a open space and there's what I love about the space is
02:51 that it echoes and the sound there's so many different sounds and they're
02:55 playing in the background so every corner has different sounds and it's
02:59 kind of like the dream house, Lamont Young's dream house, where every time you
03:03 turn a little bit you can hear different sounds and then the curtains create kind
03:11 of walls and I like to create different spaces in the exhibition.
03:18 It's good to be ambiguous and mysterious. I like to go to exhibitions
03:41 and figure things out for myself and see like I feel like when the viewers coming
03:47 up with their own thoughts it's like they're working on it's like more
03:52 gratifying or like when they when they actually figure something out I think
03:55 that's part of the show too. It's really abstract.
04:01 [Music]
04:18 When I was little my mom had a Chinese restaurant and I grew up in the
04:23 restaurant drawing on placemats and everything and my mom was interested in
04:28 art and we would take drawing classes at her friend's house, painting classes and
04:34 I would sit as a model for the class and then growing up my sister was in this
04:40 punk hardcore band in the 90s so she had she brought me to shows a lot and I had
04:47 zines and I'd wear her clothes and it was cool so I grew up with that and I
04:53 always wanted to be artists I knew it it's where I am most understood and
04:59 where I can be myself and the best where I could do well and which and it's the
05:09 thing that brings me the most joy and happiness I think that's important and
05:14 so I've just always been collecting going to like garage sales and collect
05:21 thrift stores and collecting things and making art out of like nothing using any
05:25 supplies I had like growing up I we had rice in the house so I'd use it as glue
05:31 like just making I like to freestyle and make things out of what is around. The
05:39 growing up making zines is kind of a foundation for a lot of the art practice
05:44 of my art practice it's about it's the easiest to call it collage in video I
05:50 learned one technique I didn't classically study video but I just
05:55 learned cut and paste and I just try to use it as much as and as hard as I can
05:59 and that's all you need like all you need is a paintbrush I just want to get
06:05 my message across or just be myself.
06:10 a few years ago I was
06:39 let's see there's a flower in 2017 I was in a group show speak locale curated by
06:47 Daniel Bauman I had created this movie this film feature-length mommy it's
06:55 about in short it's about my mother passed away and she I didn't know she
07:02 was always writing a book about the story of her life and through cleaning
07:07 the house I found it and I start and I didn't know she was meeting with like a
07:11 ghost writer to write in the library her English wasn't very good so I started
07:17 the film with the first part of her story in the middle is where we meet and
07:22 I finish it with my story so this was on view at Künstler Zurich in 2017 it was
07:30 really nice they Otto Bowen invited me back to work on the show but it's
07:37 funny because he didn't I didn't really know who he was and he didn't tell me
07:42 what it was for and he was like hi I'm coming to New York can we meet and I was
07:46 like I'm busy sorry and then I was like okay this is really important I let's
07:51 meet okay and then we partied and then it was like really nice and then that's
07:55 how the show began
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