Juxtapoz Magazine - The "Pendulum" Swings: Mike Lee @ HALF Gallery, NYC

"Assimilation is not a monolith. Just as notions of the American Dream shapeshift so, too, does the vision of that fantasy. In Mike Lee' s case, he has witnessed a refocusing on family and shared values. This embrace of a more traditional mindset echoes his parents' generation, even if theirs was an immigrant Korean-American experience. Sometimes we need this outside perspective to show us who we are as a people."

"Mike Lee grew up largely with an absent father who personified a form of workaholism as means of financial survival. His mother, conversely, was a pillar of stability and domestication in the home. His current show reflects this duality, where his dad is symbolized as an American made car, almost how John Currin often employed candelabras as stand-in for the male figure in his early work."

""Yet, paradoxically," notes Mike Lee, "rising economic and inflationary pressures are turning this aspiration into something increasingly out of reach, leaving this dream as a relic of the past." This exhibition exists then both as a love letter to his mom and dad while suggesting a mirage of what his own future may hold. Or in the words of William Faulkner, "The past is never dead. It's not even the past.""

Assimilation shifts rather than remains uniform, with contemporary emphasis moving toward family and shared values. Mike Lee observes a return to traditional mindsets paralleling his immigrant Korean-American parents' generation. He contrasts an absent, workaholic father with a stabilizing, domestic mother, and symbolizes paternal presence as an American-made car while recalling outsider perspectives like Robert Frank's The Americans. The exhibition interrogates the American Dream amid rising economic and inflationary pressures that make aspirational futures less attainable. The work functions as a love letter to parents and as a meditation on generational identity and the mirage of future stability.

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