Prototype 24 is part of Mata Lee’s ongoing exploration of identity construction through deliberately disrupted visual codes. The face, reduced to its most minimal expression, appears to float in a neutral space where only a few essential markers remain: distant blue eyes, a tight mouth, porcelain skin—formal signatures characteristic of the artist’s practice.
The figure wears an oversized, almost technical optical device, evoking both an instrument of vision and a cognitive filter. The large circular lenses, saturated in an intense blue, act as a threshold between the external world and the subject’s interiority—a recurring reminder in Mata Lee’s work of a gaze that observes while simultaneously protecting itself.
The upright black ears—hybrid, animal-like, drawn as symbolic extensions—amplify the idea of a being in transition, between persona and prototype, between fiction and presence. The red checkered shirt, iconic and culturally familiar, anchors this futuristic figure in a recognizable imaginary world, creating a subtle tension between the everyday and the uncanny.
Through its economy of means and its quiet intensity, Prototype 24 questions contemporary constructions of the face: what is shown, what is concealed, and what inevitably persists despite erasure.
Prototype 24 is part of Mata Lee’s ongoing exploration of identity construction through deliberately disrupted visual codes. The face, reduced to its most minimal expression, appears to float in a neutral space where only a few essential markers remain: distant blue eyes, a tight mouth, porcelain skin—formal signatures characteristic of the artist’s practice.
The figure wears an oversized, almost technical optical device, evoking both an instrument of vision and a cognitive filter. The large circular lenses, saturated in an intense blue, act as a threshold between the external world and the subject’s interiority—a recurring reminder in Mata Lee’s work of a gaze that observes while simultaneously protecting itself.
The upright black ears—hybrid, animal-like, drawn as symbolic extensions—amplify the idea of a being in transition, between persona and prototype, between fiction and presence. The red checkered shirt, iconic and culturally familiar, anchors this futuristic figure in a recognizable imaginary world, creating a subtle tension between the everyday and the uncanny.
Through its economy of means and its quiet intensity, Prototype 24 questions contemporary constructions of the face: what is shown, what is concealed, and what inevitably persists despite erasure.
