News

Jan 29, 2024

WVU multimedia artist’s new ‘Symphony of Sickness’ series riffs on heavy metal band logos

For his series “Symphony of Sickness,” Jason Lee with the College of Creative

For his series "Symphony of Sickness," Jason Lee with the College of Creative Arts creates multimedia art that combines outlines of multiple heavy band logos. Prints were formed by laser cutting individual logos from linoleum, then relief printing the logos individually, one on top of another. (WVU Photo/Jason Lee)

Rorschach blots. Crabs. Tangled hair. Spiderwebs. Every fan of artist Jason Lee sees something different in the prints, video and wall-mounted sculptures that comprise his multimedia project, "Symphony of Sickness."

Since those works are all about illegibility, that's just how Lee — associate professor of sculpture at the West Virginia University College of Creative Arts — likes it.

The actual source material for Lee's images isn't easy to guess, but once you know, it clicks. Each of his complex forms is composed of multiple heavy metal band logos superimposed on top of each other.

Even his project title is the name of an album by a metal band, Carcass. For both Lee and Carcass, "Symphony of Sickness" uses "sick" in the slang sense of the term.

"In the metal scene, when something's ‘sick,’ it'sgood," Lee said. "It's a symphony of sickness because it's a number of elementscoming together to create something new, something ‘sick’ yet cohesive."

Lee began working on "Symphony of Sickness" in2019, supported by a faculty research grant. Artists Image Resources inPittsburgh collaborated with Lee on printmaking and mounted the firstexhibition of works from the series this summer.

Metal band logos are famously difficult todecipher, to a degree that Lee said has become "tongue in cheek." Intrigued by theirillegibility, he decided to obscure the logos even more by stacking them — renderingthem in layer upon textural layer of "velvety," thick black ink.

"A lot of my work is generated bycountercultures," Lee said. "I have a series based on skateboarding, and another based onpunk rock. I was partially raised in a mom-and-pop circus, a counterculturethat was a little world unto itself, and I’ve made work about that as well."

In 2015, his good friend, Jim Konya, died. Konyawas a musician active in the heavy metal counterculture and was featured onmore than 100 records at the time of his passing. Konya was from Parma, Ohio,and after he passed, he was issued the key to the city.

"Aguy who played in bands called Nun Slaughter and Spawn of Satan getting a keyto the city — that got me. He had such a huge impact. I started thinking aboutthat overlap between worlds and playing around with a logo from one of Jim'sbands. I cut out a few versions with a lasercutter, started stacking them and it just happened," Lee said.

"I put one on top of anotherand the light bulb went off, where I saw this logo that is meant tocommunicate, that is used as a band's signifier, but you have to be in the knowto understand it. There's a certain amount of gatekeeping and there's a barrierto the outside world. The thing they use to identify themselves also obscuresthat identity."

By printing many logos on top of each other, Lee said he's "commenting on howubiquitous these illegible logos are. I’m obscuring them while also unifyingthem into an encompassing structure. Through that, you get thisabstracted form that evokes imagery, like you’re staring at a cloud."

Once Lee knew he wanted tocombine multiple logos, the research began.

"My only criteria for selectinglogos were that – apart from Jim's band – I couldn't be able to read them orknow what they said, they had to be symmetrical, and I had to be able to cutthem out all in one piece."

To create each print, Lee cutlogo outlines from a linoleum block, then printed one after another on a sheetof paper. Most prints incorporate between10 and 25 logos each, some stack more than 30. Lee has completed 60 prints, aimingfor 100.

"This is probably what I’mdoing for the next five or six years," he said, focusing increasingly onsculpture.

Logo stacking happens digitallyfor the sculptures, which are created from computer designs with a water jetcutter at the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering's Lane Innovation Hub.

"The sculptural pieces have 20alternating layers of resin and paint," Lee said. "That's why their surfacesseem so deep. It's not just one layer of black, so it feels like you can lookinto the void."

There's also video art with itsown heavy metal soundtrack. For the installation, a musician recorded nineminutes of distorted guitar. That plays through an amplifier while a projector flashesthe black outline of each individual logo onto the wall so rapidly that thesequential video frames seem to overlap in time just as the printed logosoverlap on paper.

"New shapes appear, like thoseold Magic Eye posters that were supposed to become three-dimensional if youstared at them long enough and let your eyes defocus," Lee said.

The guitar track and patternsof light create a symphony that's totally sick, colloquially speaking, althoughLee acknowledges that creating this work throughout the pandemic may haveintroduced "a relationship to disease structure. The way the images evolve andproliferate – there's almost a virus-like nature to that. There's certainly anaggressiveness.

"But a lot of people see a lotof humor in the pieces, too, which is great. The unintended parallels thataudiences find are interesting to me, and so is the cross-appeal the work hashad."

For Lee, the fact that thoseaudiences comprise both gallerygoers and metalheads is evidence of cultural"cross-pollination," he said. "We aren't as different as we think."

-WVU-

mm/11/28/22

Research WriterWVU Research Communications304-709-6667; [email protected] 1-855-WVU-NEWS for the latest West VirginiaUniversity news and information from WVUToday.

Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.