QUEUE Gallery is pleased to present the first Miami solo exhibition, Florida is so fun with her, by artist Ryan Lee. Born in Sacramento, California and having recently moved to Miami, Lee’s approach to painting is shaped by lived experience, acute social observation, and a humor rooted in punk realism. Working primarily with airbrush in recent years, his paintings are composed from casual photographs captured by himself and friends, focusing on contradictory, grotesque, overlooked, abject, and ordinary spaces. Rather than assigning concrete narratives onto the work, Lee gravitates towards images that genuinely move him, allowing contradiction, absurdity, and incompleteness to coexist in natural harmony. He is less interested in presenting resolved answers than in remaining open to the strange logic of instinct itself. The looseness of meaning itself becomes the meaning, letting instinct and contradiction guide the work rather than forcing it toward neat conclusions.
Though the paintings may appear disconnected at first glance, Lee sees them as unified by their shared “attitude” — the subtle and strange ways people imprint themselves onto the spaces they leave behind. Across the works are traces of desire, shame, loneliness, humor, carelessness, and value; channeling moments of honesty embedded within everyday life.This openness carries Lee toward imagery that ranges from painted ashtrays, emphasized cow balls, a safe that cannot be unlocked, even a life-sized painted fish sculpture laid across a bed of ice. This philosophy extends into Lee’s personal life as well, including his decision to move to Florida to live with his girlfriend, who even helped sew the seams of the painted canvas dead fish sculpture. In this sense, the title, Florida is so fun with her, lingers as one of the exhibition’s few moments of direct tenderness amid imagery otherwise marked by spontaneity, vulgarity, and spectral presences. It subtly traces back to the uncertain instinct and love that brought Lee to Florida in the first place. In a state as elusive and contradictory as Florida itself, Lee’s work leans toward the beautiful reminder that freedom can emerge from abandoning certainty and occasionally prioritizing fun.
Ryan Lee (b. 2001, Sacramento, CA) is an artist currently based in Miami, FL. Lee received an MFA in Studio Art from New York University in 2025 and graduated with distinction from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2023 with a BFA in Painting and Drawing. He has produced album covers and merchandise for artists including Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blue, and Anysia Kym, to name a few. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions, as well as art fair presentations, including with Strada World (New York), Color Club (Chicago), Good Mother Studio (Oakland), The Untitled Void (South Korea), and DEMO (Sacramento), among others. Lee recently completed a residency at Virreina, Loma Serena in Oicatá, Boyacá, Colombia, where he produced several works included in his current exhibition at QUEUE Gallery, Miami.