Celia Lees: LOVE LANGUAGE

Sugarlift is pleased to present Celia Lees: LOVE LANGUAGE, on view at the High Line Nine: 507 West 27th Street, New York, NY, from February 28 - March 27, 2024. The opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 7th at 6:00 pm.

How we each express love to one another is at the center of Lees’ latest collection. LOVE LANGUAGE is Lees’ investigation of her own. In contemporary dating practices, how we love has evolved into a referenceable taxonomy. Couples slot themselves into labels that best fit their love language. Some prefer “acts of service” while others yearn for “words of affirmation.”

In LOVE LANGUAGE, Lees breaks down hers at a molecular level. Some works explore a single, seemingly innocuous phrase exchanged between her and a lover. In other works, she grieves the failures and darker undercurrents of relationships past. Throughout the collection, she depicts a relationship stage, a word, or a feeling of love. Lees makes clear to us that her love language is transient and does not fit within any system. In some pieces, her love language is confident, assertive and expressive–brush strokes are intense and gestural, combined with highly energetic marks. In other pieces, her love language is melancholic and yearning—intense palettes with diluted inks, allowing gravity to dictate the composition.

In her largest work to-date, AT LONG LAST, Lees depicts the wide, expansive tableau of unbridled joy in finding the right love. In AT LONG LAST, opportunity, excitement and limitlessness shine through. On this new horizon, Lees continues the journey to find her LOVE LANGUAGE.