Tim Lee

This book, by Canadian artist Tim Lee (born 1975), utilizes photographs of the past century's most iconic and eclectic public figures--actors, authors, politicians, athletes, scientists, artists, musicians, designers and religious leaders from Mark Twain to John McEnroe, Jay-Z to Mother Teresa. Each are featured, a pair per page, in a carousel loop of 162 pairings. The book begins and ends with Andy Warhol, who is first seen standing with Muhammad Ali, then on the final page of the book with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. Every new page contains an individual from the preceding page matched up with a new partner, forming a continuing sequence of prominent individuals meeting their seemingly random counterparts. Like Lee's performative practice, which imagines conversations between disparate cultural figures, the photographs proceed with both major and minor shifts in place and time, accumulating in an imaginative meditation on how individuals might meet in a larger discourse.

San Francisco's Capp Street Project was founded in 1983 as the first visual arts residency in the United States dedicated to the creation and presentation of new art installations. For his 2007 residency, Vancouver-based artist Tim Lee created an exhibition influenced by Steve Martin's first comedy album, Let's Get Small (1977), and Neil Young's seminal electric/acoustic album, Rust Never Sleeps (1979). Answering Martin's now-famous quip from that album, "You just can't play a depressing song on the banjo," Lee mastered Neil Young's maudlin "My My, Hey Hey" on banjo and then installed a recording of it in the Wattis Institute elevator. This engaging publication includes texts by Wattis Institute Director Jens Hoffmann and Deputy Director Claire Fitzsimmons