Solid Turns Liquid

In Solid Turns Liquid, 2015, Jane Lee challenges the traditional definition of painting through an inquiry into its materiality and form. Lee's background in fashion is apparent in the way this work hangs as pleated panels, their multiple folds spreading out gracefully from the painting's tapered top edge. These richly-textured paintings, which transition from white to deep red, are the result of a process that incorporates both control and chance, developing tactile layers that play with colour, depth, material, and space. In the same way that the work's title refers to a transformative process between states of matter, Lee's work lies between painting and sculpture, a state "between the 2nd and 3rd dimensions" as described by Japanese curator, Fumio Nano. Made in 2015, the work was aptly included in a survey exhibition exploring the material, conceptual, and technical developments in painting in Singapore on the occasion of the republic's 50th anniversary as an independent nation.