2008 SOBEY ART AWARD

Tim Lee, My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)/ Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black), Neil Young, 1979, C-print 2007, two parts: 88" x 64" each. Courtesy Cohan and Leslie, New York; Lisson Gallery, London; Johnen & Schöttle, Cologne.

Tim Lee, a Vancouver-based artist working in photography, video, and sculpture, has won the 2008 Sobey Art Award, one of Canada’s premier awards for young artists. Given annually to an artist 40 years old or younger, the award comes with a $50,000 prize.

Tim Lee has said his influences range from Johann Sebastian Bach to Dan Graham to Ted Williams – he works in reconstructing creative histories that begin in the past and extend into an imagined future. The assessment of the Sobey’s Curatorial Panel was that Lee’s work “brings together formalism and conceptualism; its visual impact always exceeding the multiple levels that go into it.” After recent solo shows at London’s Hayward Gallery and the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, Lee will participate in the upcoming Biennale of Sydney in Australia.

Long list and short list artists are chosen each year by a panel of curators from across Canada. In 2008, the panel included Gemey Kelly of the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, NB, Nathalie de Blois of the Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec, David Moos of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Anthony Kiendl of Winnipeg’s Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art, and Scott Watson of the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia.