OEDIPUS
24 MAY - 14 JUNE 2025
THE COMPLEX
LEE WELCH
“Welch’s painting unfolds like a memory misfiled—imprecise, faint at the edges, yet insistent in its atmosphere.”
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all is vanity
2025
acrylic on polyester
137 x 102 cm
€5,000 -
all silently concentrating
2025
acrylic on polyester
180 x 140 cm
€8,500
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epochal defining while one creates beautiful problems
2025
acrylic on polyester
180 x 140 cm
€8,500 -
for a long time I had wanted
2025
acrylic on polyester
100 x 80 cm
€4,150
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a whole string of failures
2025
acrylic on polyester
140 x 110 cm
€5,750 -
the smallest daily chore can be humanised
2025
acrylic on polyester
140 x 110 cm
€5,750
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I'm just going to leave it
2025
acrylic on polyester
100 x 80 cm
€4,150 -
mindless superstition and pointless ritual
2025
acrylic on polyester
50 x 40 cm
€2,050
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aqua seafoam shame
2025
acrylic on polyester
100 x 80 cm
€4,150 -
all at once
2025
acrylic on polyester
140 x 110 cm
€5,750
LEE WELCH - OEDIPUS
€20,00
In Oedipus, Lee Welch turns the act of looking into something unstable, even uneasy. Through a finely calibrated combination of painting, printmaking, and architectural incision, the exhibition—and this accompanying monograph—stages a quiet drama of fractured perspectives and delayed recognitions. Welch’s images, often restrained to the point of near-erasure, draw from a broad constellation of references: classical myth, pop culture, quotidian rituals, private gestures. But rather than offering conclusions, they sit in a space of open-ended association—where meaning is provisional and emotion lingers just beneath the surface. With new writing and a selection of works that span the past decade, Oedipus traces the arc of an artist whose practice is both rigorously spare and quietly affecting, concerned not with resolution but with the subtle conditions under which things—images, identities, feelings—begin to come into view.
PUBLISHER
spider & ink
LANGUAGE
English
COMPOSITION
Hardcover
CONTRIBUTORS
Text by Martin Herbert, Mark O'Gorman and Lee Welch.
ISBN
9781068307058
PUBLICATION DATE
July 2025
PAGES
40
SIZE
210 x 140 mm
These are restrained, elliptical works—but their effect is lasting. Welch doesn’t just document a fractured world. He recreates the textures of living in it: the disorientation, the fragility, the fleeting moments of connection that still, somehow, endure.
ON VIEW IN THE COMPLEX
The gallery is open Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm, Saturday 12pm - 5pm.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
LEE WELCH
Lee Welch (born Louisville, Kentucky) currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. He received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in 2009 and his MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. Welch has held prestigious residencies at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, supported by the Arts Council.
His work has been featured in numerous significant exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including The National Gallery, Dublin; The Glucksman Gallery, Cork; the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; and Objectif, Antwerp.
In 2025, Welch received The Homiens Art Prize in New York and co-founded the arts initiative Hallahan & Welch, which debuted with a significant group exhibition at Dublin Castle's Coach House Gallery.
Welch's works are held in prominent private and public collections such as the Arts Council, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, and the OPW - State Art Collection. His practice has also been recognised in Artforum, Art Monthly, Frieze, Irish Arts Review, and The Irish Times.
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