"I prefer anything that has been in a liquid state - clay, concrete, fiberglass, all sorts of metal. I have difficulties with wood, because it begins as one thing and remains that one thing. Mutability is what interests me." This is an interesting remark that the artist Catherine Lee made recently about the materials she prefers. This unique sensibility may be seen as the main topic of the fourth one-person show of the American artist held at the Jamileh Weber gallery in Zurich. Catherine Lee, born 1950 Tampa, Texas, lives and works in Texas and New York. Catherine Lee began her career as a painter more than twenty years ago before turning to the sculptural object in the mid eighties. As a result, her sculpture has a relief quality in that they are shown frontally in relation to the wall. By definition, these aesthetic objects do not correspond to the concepts we have for works of art. The terms painting, sculpture and relief do not cover her work completely; they merely name one aspect of them. As carter Ratcliff remarked in an essay: "One may detect in Catherine Lee's work a passion for primal materials, primal states of being. That's why it is so unsatisfactory to call her a painter, a sculptor, a ceramist. She is a cosmographer whose speculations about matter employ matter itself." Regardless of the materiality, formally each single work consists of various elements. They appear as solitaire or as serial works, in this case, allowing her to fathom out the sensitive variations of coloration and texture. For years Catherine Lee has established a unique skill in treating materials. Especially the patinated bronze works - since the early nineties compiled in the "Alphabet Series", a lifetime project of the artist - are astonishing. With her patinaes she brings colors to the surface never to be expected. Very often she evokes some kind of material illusion: What seems to be a polished marble or a gently grinded piece of precious wood turns out to be a cast metal with patina. Catherine Lee reminds one of an alchemist. From shapeless fluidity she creates solid forms, she uses fire to cast bronze, glaze ceramics and melt encaustic. Besides the well-known bronze works the exhibition presents new examples of Catherine Lee's Raku-ceramic series and encaustic works. Already in the very beginning of her artistic career Catherine Lee used the antique technique of encaustic, composed of beeswax and resin bound pigments, applied or fused on the ground. In the last years Catherine Lee took up again this media and created a series on laminated paper. The show will remain on view through Saturday, March 15, 2003 at the Jamileh Weber Gallery, Waldmannstrasse 6, CH-8001 Zurich. Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 11am to 6pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm and by appointment. For further information or photographs please contact the gallery, phone: +41-1-252 10 66, fax: +41-1-252 11 32 email: info@jamilehweber.com, www.jamilehweber.com