Origin 1999

Origin was a series of manipulated photo images and animation created in 1999. It describes the human evolution based on my own imagination. I suggest that there were ten stages in human evolution, from the fish form (as Coelacanth) and then transformed to the reptile, monkey and human...

My motivation came from the up coming millennium. The new millennium (year of 00) reminds me the grand beginning of everything. My concept started a few mouths after the New York Times Magazine gave me the opportunity to create a self-portrait which applied to a special technology issue in 1997. I made a sequence of four portraits which shown our past as the monkeys and our future in perspective. To push it further, I supposed that all of the mammals, the reptiles and even the fishes were all related to us originally.

- Daniel Lee

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

• 2019
  “Return to the Sea” at Taitung Art Museum, Taitung, Taiwan
• 2016
  “Looking Glass/Daniel Lee Retrospective” at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
• 2014
  “Daniel Lee/Metamorphing” at OCT Art Center, Shanghai, China
• 2014
  “Trans-Presence” at Art Center of Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan
• 2012
  “Trace to the Origin: Daniel Lee Retrospective” at Luoca Art Center, Xiamen, China
• 2011
  “Animal Instinct / Photographs of Daniel Lee” at San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas, USA
• 2009
  “Then, Now & Next” at Tangram Art Center, Shanghai, China
• 2009
  “Is by Daniel Lee” at MiMA Workshop, Verona, Italy
• 2008
  “Daniel Lee 1993-2007 Retrospective” at Tsing Hua University, Beijing, China
• 1999
  “Origin and Judgment” at Cyber 99, Featured Artist, Lisbon, Portgual
• 1999
  “Origin” at O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, USA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• 2016
  “"Beyond the Frame" New Media Art of Taiwan” at Long Beach Museum of Art, Los Angelas, USA
• 2012
  “Wordly House” at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany
• 2010
  “Notions Of Time” at Santa Fe Complex, New Mexico, USA
• 2009
  “Become Human Become Animal” at New Society for Visual Arts, Berlin, Germany
• 2007
  “Impermanence” at Biennale of Electronic Art in Perth, Perth, Australia
• 2007
  “X-Generation” at Centre des Arts, Enghien-les-Bains, France
• 2007
  “Art & Artifice of Science” at Museum of Fine Art, New Mexico, USA
• 2005
  “Hybrid, Featured Artist” at Ars Electronica 2005, Linz, Austria
• 2003
  “Limbo Zone” at 50th Biennale, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Venice, Italy
• 2003
  “Metamorphing, transformation in science, art and mythology” at Science Museum, London, UK