Adjunct Michael Aaron Lee Opens Solo Show at Nightshifted Gallery in Brooklyn

Michael Aaron Lee, Adjunct Professor in the Art and Design Department, recently opened the solo show “Frame is a Line” at the Nightshifted Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

Michael Aaron Lee’s low-relief paper sculptures, drawings, and collages straddle the divide between fine art and craft. Borrowing patterns and pictorial forms from decorative art and folk traditions, the pieces often resemble picture frames, badges, or emblems—those things that memorialize, commemorate, or signify a particular allegiance. Ancient human forms such as masks and altars mingle with poker cards and advertising imagery, Morse code, and text taken from classic American pop song lyrics. This intentional mash-up of culturally and chronologically diverse ingredients is composed in symmetrical or grid-like arrangements to echo traditional crafts like quilting but also to stress its status as information to be read—even if parsing definitive meaning remains elusive.