On Saturday, October 21, Lee Mingwei premiered The Sleeping Project at Lombard-Freid Fine Arts. The Sleeping Project is Mingwei’s most recent artwork created to engage the viewer in an intimate action with the artist.  Known for works such as The Dining Project and The Letter Writing Project, Mingwei’s work continues to challenge the borders of performative and interactive installations, and invites the viewer to examine their own basic daily rituals. The Sleeping Project explores what it is to share the most vulnerable and intimate time of one’s day with a stranger by spending a night in the gallery with the artist.

Lee will transform the gallery into a private sleeping area consisting of two movable beds and 25 white sculptural dressing tables (one per guest) to accommodate personal belongings. Both the beds and the dressing tables, which were designed in collaboration with GOOD Design Inc., are minimalist interpretations of traditional bedroom furnishings. Each day the configuration of the beds (made to be transportable with gurney-like wheels and handles) will be exhibited in their final resting positions, a symbol of the level of intimate rapport developed between Lee and his guest. Participants can sign up to spend the night with Lee by calling the gallery.

“The moments before and after sleep can be used to facilitate profound changes in our psychic functioning -- it is these times when we are the most suggestible and in touch en we are the most suggestible and in touch with our inner material and process. The idea of the ‘one night stand’ will be shaped into an open, profound, and mutually influente night stand’ will be shaped into an open, profound, and mutually influentinto an open, profound, and mutually influential encounter. Spending a night with someone - conversing, preparing to sleep, lying down in proximity, sharing one’s unconscious hours with someone largely unknown is one of the most frightening and intimate chalge I can undertake.” Lee Mingwei

Participants in The Sleeping Project will be asked to bring along objects which would normally be found at their place of sleep – a book, clock, photos, etc. These will be left on the dressing tables, along with his or her attire from the previous night. During the remainder of the exhibition, these personal objects and clothes will be visible to gallery visitors, providing sparse but potentially fascinating clues to the anonymous people who have spent the night.

In the second gallery at Lombard-Freid, Mingwei’s most recent edition of digital paintings, “Dreaming” will accompany the exhibition. Printed on canvas, these beautiful, suggestive photographs of pillows floating in the landscape reference the unconscious stages of sleep, and provide a poetic accompaniment to the The Sleeping Project installation.

Lee Mingwei has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; and The Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art. He has been featured in many important international exhibitions including the 1999 Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Museum, Australia and in the 2000 Taipei Biennial,Taiwan.

Mingwei wishes to thank his collaborato by Amy Capellazzo and Margaret Miller.

Mingwei wishes to thank his collaborators on this project: Stephan Freid (GOODdesign); Eric Sparks (fabricator); and Greg Richardson.