Observe that in the artist’s name—a contraction of the given name Lindsey & the surname Lee—occurs the sacrifice of sight, such that when we arrive at Lindslee we have already eradicated the “-sey” (pronounced ‘see’) part between the 2 syllables & any potential for mimesis that comes with it, any attempt at visual representation of the Real (vis-à-vis Jacques Lacan’s Imaginary & the Symbolic).

But if “-sey” were pronounced ‘say,’ wouldn’t it be speech to have been sacrificed instead, all professed intent washed out by paint & image, where concept is too discursive, too jagged to jive with form?

Even the title of Lindslee’s exhibition posits a kind of loss, in which he proposes to “Work Like Nobody Is Watching”—to carry out one’s tasks without regard for other people’s expectations (i.e., to complete this exhibition in the carefree manner associated with artists)—in spite of the tragic fact that somebody is always watching.

This somebody: let us say it is an embodiment of the Symbolic in Lacanian terminology, or “the Big Other” in Slavoj Zizek’s reappropriation of Lacan: all the more present, all the more ubiquitous, all the more pressing precisely in its invisible practice of policing—in its seeming to not watch, for it watches without you knowing it.  Continued...