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The New Contemporary Art Magazine

The Peculiar, Miniature World of Mike Lee’s Small-Scale Drawings

Mike Lee draws neat, compact worlds populated by rotund homunculi. Simplified like Lego characters, his small protagonists navigate their urban landscape, which appears so conspicuously tidy that it resembles a toy replica more so than an actual city. Lee's drawings are small-scale; he utilizes negative space to make viewers zero in on specific scenes. We look into his minuscule world from an aerial view, like a child playing with a doll house or a deity looking down at the unsuspecting mortals on Earth. With his painstaking graphite work, Lee renders the humdrum of the day-to-day with novelty and humor.

Mike Lee draws neat, compact worlds populated by rotund homunculi. Simplified like Lego characters, his small protagonists navigate their urban landscape, which appears so conspicuously tidy that it resembles a toy replica more so than an actual city. Lee’s drawings are small-scale; he utilizes negative space to make viewers zero in on specific scenes. We look into his minuscule world from an aerial view, like a child playing with a doll house or a deity looking down at the unsuspecting mortals on Earth. With his painstaking graphite work, Lee renders the humdrum of the day-to-day with novelty and humor.

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