Terrace of the Immortals 2012 black mild steel and fire Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2013
Images from a Chinese Buddhist past have also appeared in works of recent years. In Terrace of the Immortals (2012), Lee reproduced an image from the Sung (Song) Dynasty (960-1279) – a significant time for Buddhism in China – depicting a gnarled tree beyond which men sit in an open structure. Printed as a delicate image on a large sheet of steel, plasma-cut holes were
then cut through it. The gnarled tree appears to entwine worlds at once natural, spiritual and everyday. Likewise, the plasmacut holes that assault the picture plane render perforations that connect past and present, the ancient and the contemporary. For Lee, the past needs to be met in the present; likewise, past art and heritage is met in that which is contemporary.
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