Selected Works

NEW YORK – Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce Different Places, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Philip Lee. The artist’s third solo show with the gallery is on view from 31 October to 7 December 2024. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated digital catalogue featuring an essay by Jonathan D. Katz.

Over the years, Lee has used intimate graphite portraits to explore how physical appearance shapes both self-presentation and external interpretations of identity. Lee takes months at a time bringing each portrait to life—he renders microscopic details like the gentle fraying on the brim of a hat, individual chest hairs, and even the capillaries of the eye. With careful reverence, his portraits transcend photorealism, becoming living, breathing subjects that convey their life stories in a single moment.

Lee’s current exhibition, Different Places, explores how physical characteristics can obscure identities. The title of each piece reveals both the name and profession of the subjects, encouraging viewers to confront visual misconceptions head on. As a queer man, Lee understands how crafted visages can mislead those around us, for better or for worse. Rather than offer voyeuristic portraits that alienate the subject, Lee’s immaculate renderings create quiet space to meditate on the power of visual perception, and the viewer’s role in projecting narratives.

Jonathan D. Katz writes, “Lee knows something about being misread, misunderstood, or just plain missed. And his work, in opening up the process of signifying, restores agency to the viewer, asking us to ask ourselves how meaning is conveyed, and conviction compelled, how we know what we know and if we really know it.”