LEE MARY MANNING: KISS OF THE SUN
CANADA is pleased to announce Kiss of the Sun, a one-person exhibition of photographs by Lee Mary Manning in the gallery’s 60 Lispenard Street space.
November 22, 2024 - January 11, 2025
Their analogue prints are usually gathered into small collections within a single frame, and sometimes montaged alongside fabrics, printed ephemera, or discarded objects. Manning’s images—featuring everything from street scenes to intimate glimpses of nature and people—transform the familiar into something contemplative by focusing on subtle connections and eschewing linear time. The interplay between the pictures and found materials reverberates with tender care for life’s mundane and fleeting moments. This is Manning’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
“Visiting Lee’s apartment/studio has the quality of a fairy tale. We walk downtown and through a playground where teenage boys play frisbee and ask us if we are teachers. When we say we aren’t, they look at us with suspicion and we hurry away and climb through a building site. Finally, lost in a car park, I ask a 7 foot tall man in a yarmulke with his foot in a cast if he knows the way to Lee’s building. It turns out he lives there too and he guides us to the building and to the elevator. Lee is waiting to greet us at their door, in their beautiful voice, hair blue grey, brushy and soft looking, eyes very blue.” - Chantal Joffe
“The apartment is small and full of light overlooking the FDR bridge. I've brought Lee lilacs and they arrange them alongside a bowl of blueberries and a plate of pastries. We stand and talk about music and the Lismore Castle in Ireland and Illinois and look for a long time at their work and it’s associations; visual, verbal and poetic. They nod and say "totally" in their nice voice. When we leave and they hug me, I am big and they are small but we seem to understand each other.” - Chantal Joffe
“Lee’s work is like chess for me, my mind turns them over and finds connections. The simplest thing. A braid becomes a midriff or maybe a pipe and then segues into a tie that itself contains a kind of snake. The image is at once abstract, real and surreal. A sexy collage; as if you are seeing inside a person's body. Are we all just plumbing under our jackets?” - Chantal Joffe